Pastry Chef School: Chocolate Truffles
This week in pastry school we learned about tempering chocolate, making ganaches and assembling chocolate truffles. We made tons of chocolate truffles and I’ll be covering the differences and variety.
Each Chocolate truffle is different but the process of making any truffle follows the same set of steps:
- Make a ganache filling: tempered chocolate + liquids + fats + flavour ingredients. The ratio of chocolate : everything else determines the truffle filling texture (loose/runny vs. stiff/solid).
- Chill ganache filling: allow filling to cool in containers that’ll help the shaping phase. (e.g. large sheets for squares, scooplable container for rounds, etc)
- Shape ganache filling: e.g. scoop and roll to shape rounds, pipe kisses & lollipops as kisses, cut from chilled sheets for squares, etc.
- Coat fillings: temper white/milk/dark chocolate and dip shaped ganache using specialized chocolate dipping forks or using your hands. Let rest on acetate sheets for a glossy bottom.
- Decorate: e.g. apply template on top, add lollipop cane, cover in edible glitter, sprinkle salt, etc.
These Whiskey Truffles were the first truffles I made so I’l talk about these first. The Irishcream Ganache is a mix of 8:1 milk:dark melted chocolate, cream, whiskey, coffee extract and honey. They were shaped as squares, dipped in tempered milk chocolate and applied the pattern above (like a sticker). These tasted super boozy to me.
These Kaffir Lime White Chocolate Truffles had cream and glucose infused with kaffir lime leaves and mixed in with 8:1 melted white chocolate : cocoa butter. They were then scooped out using a small cookie scoop, rolled, hand rolled in tempered white chocolate and sprinkled with edible silver glitter.
Infused Truffles can be infused with anything: basil, kaffir lime, lemongrass, etc. Anytime there’s a liquid or fat infusions can happen.
These Earl Grey Lollipops had cream infused with Earl Grey tea, and then mixed with 3:1 65%:38% chocolate mixture and butter. They were then piped as kisses, dipped in chocolate, placed on the pattern and had a lollipop stick placed in them. Again with Infused Ganaches we can infuse any flavour into the cream.
These Raspberry White Chocolate Ganache is a 3:1:1 mix of melted white chocolate : heated cream : fruit puree. It was then cooled, scooped, rolled, had the lollipop stick inserted, dipped in tempered white chocolate and placed on the pattern to cool. Flavored Ganaches are super interesting because we can substitute the raspberry puree for many other things.
This White Chocolate Mojito Ganache is a simple 1:2 mix of cream infused with mint : melted white chocolate and a bit of rum. They were then chilled, scooped, rolled, hand rolled in tempered white chocolate and sprinkled with edible green glitter combined with alcohol. Again with Infused Ganaches and Flavored Ganaches we could have substituted the mint and rum for almost anything.
This Raspberry Ganache has a 4:2:1 mix of melted Velrune Guanaja 70% chocolate : raspberry puree : butter. The ganache was then chilled, scooped, rolled, dipped in high percentage milk chocolate and sprinkled with ground up freeze-dried raspberry. They were incredibly raspberry in flavour.
This Salted Caramel Ganache is a mixture of medium-colored caramel, heated cream, milk chocolate and butter. It was then chilled, scooped, rolled, dipped in tempered milk chocolate and sprinkled with fleur de sal salt.
The Dulce De Leche Ganache has Dulce De Leche (simmered milk+sugar that’s caramelized), coffee infused cream, melted white chocolate and irish cream liqueur.
The assembly of the Dulce De Leche Truffles is super interesting. First, we used premade bonbon shells. We then filled them halfway with the dulce de leche ganache, then irish cream ganache and finally closed the hole opening with tempered dark chocolate. Then the entire bonbon got dipped in tempered chocolate.
I keep saying tempered chocolate in this post like it’s no big thing to temper chocolate when I’ve failed at that a lot. The process we learned at school this week makes a lot of sense to me:
- Heat chocolate over baine marie to 115°F (specifically 113°F for dark chocolate, 104°F for white/milk chocolate)
- Take off baine marie and slowly seed unmelted tempered chocolate. Aggressively agitate with a rubber spatula.
- Goal temperature is 87°F for white/milk chocolate and 86°F-90°F for dark chocolate.
- When within 2°F of the aforementioned goal temperature stop adding large chunks of unmelted chocolate and instead microplane in tempered chocolate. Keep agitating.
- Dip a test parchment paper strip or knife, let cool and and see if the chocolate is glossy tempered.
To make Mendiants we spooned tempered dark chocolate into rounds on acetate sheets (for a glossy bottom) and covered with chopped dried fruit, nuts and glitter.
These delicious peanut butter cups are another great example of using tempered chocolate. The first layer is tempered white chocolate, peanut butter and feuilletine (crushed crepes). It’s piped into these adorable tiny cups, chilled and then covered with a thin layer of tempered dark chocolate sprinkled with roasted ground peanuts.
We started this week by tasting different kinds of chocolate and taking aggressive notes. For me the most important thing I learned is that my preference away from strong bitter taste stirs me towards milk chocolate.
Read more about my adventures in pastry school by reading about last week:
