nothing to truffle with

There is a common theory in cooking that if you are good in one area then you tend to not do as well in another area. The distinction which rules in this theory applies particularly with desserts or baking. While most people feel confident in planning and preparing meals, they tend to lose this confidence when it comes to baking or making desserts, and I've known plenty of people who can produce miracles when it comes to making desserts yet cooking dinner for family or friends is akin to martyrdom. I have always suspected that it isn't a die hard, tried and true rule, but it always seems to stand firm nonetheless.

For the holidays I have attempted to make truffles, and the encounter has left me feeling like I just shouldn't put the theory to the test without a back up plan or a last minute pitch and ditch solution. They were turning out OK, but far less desirable than I was expecting, & at this moment I'm waiting for a minor burst of inspiration to steer me in the right direction. If you get stuck on a problem, skip it, move on & come back to it later. It's generally a good approach but does it work with desserts? We're waiting to find out.

The making of truffles seemed pretty straightforward. Using a recipe from The New Basics Cookbook, I adapted it in an attempt to make something I can only semi-accurately describe as Persian Truffles. At least that is the direction it veered toward. The recipe was for Chocolate Scotch Hazelnut Truffles. Not wanting to reproduce the familiar holiday fare of alcohol drenched sweets (such as rum balls) I opted to substitute the scotch with a blend of Grand Marnier and brandy, except I used a tad less than the recipe called for. It's hardly decipherable. I also added a small amount of a Persian Spice blend I made sometime ago, which has rose petals, cinnamon, saffron & pepper in it. It's fairly light yet I'm always challenged by what to use it with, and this seemed to be the perfect opportunity. I also added what I thought was a small amount of rose paste - about 1 teaspoon. Since I doubled the recipe I figured this would compliment it nicely. The rose paste seems to be highly concentrated - I'm guessing that 1 drop would suffice. If that is the case than my small vial of rose paste is going to last at least five generations. Everything else was pretty much by the book.

I'm not inexperienced. I've made truffles before. I've done stints in restaurants where I made desserts as well as prepped & cooked the main courses, and I've worked as a pastry assistant, so desserts aren't entirely outside of my skill sets. Something didn't quite work here, though. Maybe it was the chocolate. Our supermarket doesn't carry the high end chocolate like Callebaut or Valrhona, and I went with Hershey's Special Dark baking chocolate, which I love, and I thought would taste great. The taste is good but the consistency of the ganache didn't pull through. The truffles have been sitting in the freezer over night in an attempt to get them firm enough to dip into warm chocolate, yet when I heated up the remaining chocolate for this it didn't become fluid enough for dipping, and has left me with a blob of chocolate chunks. Fortunately I can find something to use it in.

Because of the inconsistency of the ganache I also had problems with forming the truffles. The recipe instructs using a spoon to scoop a small amount, placing a hazelnut in each one and then rolling it into a ball in your hands. This works fairly well but the ganache was still too soft to work with. I opted for using a pastry bag to squeeze equal amounts into rows and columns onto a parchment lined sheet, placing a hazelnut into each one and then refrigerating to set them. I even experimented with rolling some into chopped hazelnuts.

My only choice for hazelnuts was either whole unshelled or rough chopped. Since I wanted whole hazelnuts I bought the bag of unshelled nuts & removed the shells myself, which was more work than I really cared for. I toasted them in the shell in the hopes that the heat might make them crack open & make the job of shelling them easier. No such luck.

So there they sit, row upon row upon row, waiting for their final coat of chocolate and an outer layer of cocoa dust to complete them as outstanding members of the dessert truffle family while I try to figure out how to make them into something I'd be happy to give as a small holiday gift - or what to do with them if it doesn't work.

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The truffles seemed to have pulled through after all. Sometimes it helps to just leave a recipe in progress alone for a while & come back to it later. I opted for not immersing them into warm chocolate to seal them; instead I went with letting them set in the freezer until firm, then rolling them into balls, rolling them in chopped, toasted hazelnuts, and then rolling them in cocoa powder. They look a bit funky but I think they will work nicely as small, homemade folk craft gifts.