Chocolate Truffles

So yesterday, I made the truffle base (25g butter, 200ml double cream and 200g dark chocolate) which I left to cool and harden in the fridge overnight.

Today, I spooned out the mix, shaped into balls (I made 30), although my shapes and sizes varied considerably! I think I possibly need to weigh out the mix so that I get roughly equal sized balls. I also found that while the warmth of my hands meant that the top layer of each ball started to melt and was very slippery in my hands, the middle stayed pretty firm and was quite difficult still to shape easily! Leigh suggested using latex gloves and this made it a bit easier. Later on I read another recipe for chocolate truffles that suggested dusting your hands and the work surface with cocoa - sounds good, will try that next time.

Then we get to the covering of the balls. My imagined truffles are coated in white chocolate and have freeze-dried raspberry pieces sprinkled on the top. So I melted my white chocolate - fine. The rest didn't really go to plan! The first truffle I dropped into the chocolate bowl to cover, big mistake. The truffle just started melting! I hoiked it out as soon as I noticed but this left me with lovely dark chocolate streaks in my white chocolate. I then tried poking the truffles onto cocktail sticks and dripping the chocolate over the top. This worked better...until I had to remove the cocktail stick from the truffle - because the hot chocolate was melting the surface of the truffle, anything I used to try and pry out the cocktail stick resulted in a massive dent in the truffle and a big patch of dark chocolate that mingled every so nicely with the white chocolate. Still I persevered for another couple and I think I managed 5.

They actually don't look too bad in the photo, but closeup, the flecks of dark chocolate are more obvious.

I rolled the rest in cocoa powder. Much easier and they still taste good. I wanted the truffles to be white and pink as that goes with the theme of my mother-in-law's charity for the year, but now I'm also planning pink and white meringues, having the chocolate contrast might be good (notice how I'm wriggling out of trying another batch of covered truffles again!).

Onwards and upwards!