Valentine's Day 2021

As a Valentine's Day celebration, our local independent chocolate shop, Sweet Cascades, offered a "make truffles at home" class. We signed up, which meant we picked up a kit the week before and started work the day before.

The first step was making the ganache. The kit contained a half pound of dark chocolate. We heated up half a cup of heavy whipping cream (which was not included in the kit because of refrigeration requirements) to mix with the chocolate.

Start of cooking

Once the cream simmered, we took it off the heat and added the chocolate. We patiently waited for the melting to happen.

Combining ingredients

My daughter whisked the mixture until it was smooth. Finally, we covered it and stuck in the fridge for the next day. We found out the next day that if we wanted to add flavor, we should have added it during the mixing. The trick is to keep the liquid level the same. So if you are adding a tablespoon of rum or bourbon, take out a tablespoon of the heavy whipping cream.

Whisky (not whiskey) business

In the fridge

The next day (i.e. the Saturday before Valentine's Day), we took out the ganache and melted the other chocolates in small bowls for dipping/coating the ganache. We had a half pound of milk chocolate and half a pound of dark chocolate. According to instructions, we microwaved each for a minute at half power, stirred, and heated them more until we had a smooth consistency. A chocolatier needs to be careful as chocolate can easily burn! We also took out the ganache about an hour early, but it got too warm and didn't hold its form as well as it could. Possibly we mixed in too much heavy cream the day before.

The kit included a melon baller for rolling the ganache and various items for sprinkling on the truffles.

A ready work station

We started up the Zoom and enjoyed a bit of conversation before we got to work. The work was messy enough that we did not take pictures. Since our ganache wasn't as chill as it could have been, the balls were a bit lumpy. Dipping was tricky too. We used spoons and forks to dip the ganache balls into the melted chocolate. The chocolate outside solidified fairly quickly, giving a good coating.

Finished work

We had leftover dipping chocolate. We checked our cabinets and then dipped some marshmallows, some peanuts, and some cashews. The nuts we did as clusters, not individual nuts, because that would be...nuts.

Nut clusters

We sampled some of the chocolates that night, and then enjoyed the fruits of our labor on Valentine's Day.