Chocolate Truffles – Coffee Cardamom, Almond Fig, Pomegranate Pistachio, Sea Salt Strawberry. Melt in your mouth, hand-made truffles are a perfect, thoughtful, and delicious holiday gift.
I love the holidays. And I love giving handmade gifts especially to teachers, close friends, and relatives who have stepped up and taken care by giving their time. In the past, I have often given coffee cakes, cookies and muffins as gifts. This year, my kids wanted to do something different. They voted for truffles. I was a bit apprehensive at first as chocolate is temperamental and sometimes difficult to work with. But we persevered.
Chocolate Truffles
A Chocolate Truffle is traditionally made with a chocolate ganache center coated in chocolate, cocoa powder, chopped toasted nuts or candied fruits usually in a spherical shape.
The recipe for the ganache is basic and tastes good by itself or with other flavorings. My freezer is usually full of preserves and jams, made at the height of seasons bounty, so flavorings for the truffles were a simple matter of seeing what was remaining. You can try my combinations but I urge you to carve your own flavorings and let me know your interesting ideas.
Chocolate Truffles - Coffee Cardamom, Almond Fig, Pomegranate Pistachio, Sea Salt Strawberry. Melt in your mouth, hand-made truffles are a perfect, thoughtful, and delicious holiday gift.
Ingredients
- 1/2 pound good bittersweet chocolate
- 1/2 pound good semisweet chocolate
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1 Tablespoon prepared Coffee
- 1/2 teaspoon ground Cardamom
- 2 Tablespoons Pomegranate molasses
- 1 Tablespoon ground Pistachios
- 2 Tablespoons Fig butter/jam
- 2 Tablespoons chopped Almonds
- 2 Tablespoons Strawberry Jam
- 1 Tablespoon Sea Salt
- 20 ounces Semi-sweet Chocolate, chopped
Instructions
- Chop the chocolates finely with a sharp knife. Place them in a heat-proof mixing bowl.
- Heat the cream in a small saucepan until it just boils. Turn off the heat and allow the cream to sit for 20 seconds. Pour the cream through a fine-meshed sieve into the bowl with chocolate. With a wire whisk, slowly stir the cream and chocolates together until the chocolate is completely melted.
- Divide the mixture into 4 bowls
- Mix in the flavorings - coffee and cardamom in one, fig butter into the second, pomegranate molasses in the third and strawberry jam in the fourth.
- Set aside at room temperature for 4 hours or overnight in the refrigerator (bring it to room temperature if you are refrigerating it, about an hour)
- With 2 teaspoons, spoon round balls of the chocolate mixture onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Roll each dollop of chocolate in your hands to roughly make a round ball.
- Melt 4 ounces of chocolate in a double boiler.
- Remove from heat, and stir in oil.
- Cool chocolate to 85 to 90º F. for dipping.
- Dip cold, firm truffle into melted chocolate, holding with a fork and covering with several coats of chocolate.
- Place each on a sheet lined with parchment paper.
- Decorate top with powdered pistachios for the pomegranate, chopped almonds for the fig truffles and sprinkle sea salt for the strawberry truffles.
- Place into tight container and store in cool, dry place to age for several days.
