Monday, November 11, 2013

Playing in Chocolate

My best friend Jennifer and I got together this past weekend to play with chocolate.  It was a day that was long overdue.  I mean what isn't better than getting together with a friend, catching up and playing with chocolate?

We were supposed to go to the National Chocolate Show held in Chicago this past October together. Unfortunately I was unable to attend as my day job took precedence over the hobby.  I felt bad for letting Jen down and having to ask her to get samples and information for me.  But that allowed us to get some time together to share samples but by the time we were able to do that, we couldn't have fun playing with the chocolate.

I had found an amazing Apple Spice Truffle recipe and had already created the ganache filling and so all she would have to do is mold and coat them.  I knew she would love the recipe!   So our day of fun started by pulling out our Truffly Made molds and using the Classic European Round Truffle mold we piped in the filling and let them chill out in the freezer to firm up before popping them out and dipping them in milk chocolate. We topped them with a mixture of cinnamon and graham cracker crumbs.  Don't they look delicious?  She even posted them to her FaceBook page and the first lucky local respondents were going to receive free truffles!


While those were chilling we next set to try creating one of our passions, passion fruit chocolates.  We had sampled a chocolate from the show that was a milk chocolate passion fruit bar.  Looking at the ingredient list we noted that it was made with passion fruit powder.  This of course led to an immediate search on the web to find NutraFresh Passion Fruit Powder.  This was then part of Jen's birthday gift which included the book Chocolates and Confections at Home with The Culinary Institute of America.

So, using the basic chocolate ganache recipe in the book (sorry I can't post due to copyright laws but it is worth owning the book or borrowing it from the library which I did at first) we added the passion fruit powder until we thought it would be enough but not overpowering.  We first used warmed raw cocoa butter and added in some rose coloring.  The cocoa butter mixture was painted into the truffle molds.  For these we used the heart mold (also Truffly Made).  Piped the filling in and popped them into the freezer.  These will be coated on the bottom with a cocoa powder/passion fruit powder mix to show off the pretty pink top.

We did so much more but these will be a theme for another post. Soon to come!

Keeping lifeTasty!
Tricia

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