Chocolates

Here are some beautiful chocolates I made to take to an afternoon tea on the weekend. they were a real hit,the coffee truffles were my favourite.

I have to admit I didn't temper the chocolate perfectly for these (I was in a rush) but I reccomend that others try to as it would have added an extra level of loveliness to these treats. there are plenty of tutorials on line regarding tempering chocolate so rather than fill this blog with instructions feel free to look it up on youtube.

this is the first time i have made a true soft centre and they worked out well. I made white chocolate and marmalade soft centres, espresso truffles, and mixed nut praline squares. you can make all different flavour combinations with the truffles but the basic principle is you need about 60ml of boiling cream to every 200g of chocolate. if you add any other liquids (eg. espresso) you need to add less cream or increase the amount of chocolate. you pour the boiling cream over the chocolate and stir until  as much of the chocolate has melted as possible, if not all of the chocolate melts then just finish the melting process over a water bath.

the soft centres need more cream so they will stay softer at room temperature or as I did you can add another ingredient that once melted will help the mix stay soft (i used marmalade). once the mixtures are nice and smooth they need to be chilled to go as hard as they can. the soft centre then needs to be spooned out into little dollops in some grease proof paper and put into the freezer. these dollops can be rolled into balls once they are frozen. then returned to the freezer to make sure they keep their shape. the frozen balls are dipped into tempered chocolate and left at room temperature until they are served.

I make my praline from the 100 percent nut butters you find in the health food section of the supermarket. there is usually a cashew spread and a Brazil, cashew and almond spread. you just add about 2 tablespoons of the chosen nut spread to the chocolate and cream and melt as I have said above. you can roll it into balls after it has been chilled but I just poured the mix into a lined baking tray and refrigerated it until it had gone hard. then I sliced it into squares and decorated it with white chocolate and pecans.

the coffee truffles are made the same as the soft centre but the mix didn't need to be frozen before rolling it into balls. the truffle mix will go quite firm in the fridge but it is helpful to freeze the balls before dipping them into the tempered chocolate.

Enjoy