Did I ever tell you about the time… (Part II)

That I did two things off my life list? Yes? Well, that was Part I.

I didn’t know what the office tradition was regarding holiday gifts on my team. The entire office had a Christmas party and we did a white elephant gift exchange. I chose a Dog Snuggie but it was stolen from me by a big jerk (not bitter) but the plus side is that I got to steal this, which is an amazing, amazing book. Yay, education! Anyway, that was for the whole office, not my little team. And I hate the feeling of someone getting you a christmas present and you’re like, “Shit! I mean, wow, thank you!” because they weren’t even ON your Christmas list.

So to avoid THAT happening, I decided to make truffles. I cut a magazine recipe out and saved it for, I don’t know, maybe a year. It was called DIY Truffles. And basically you melt chocolate and butter (I think) and then add flavor (peppermint oil, rum, espresso powder) and then roll it into a ball and roll that ball into a topping (chopped hazelnuts, crushed peppermint sticks, etc.) and ta da! Truffles. So I was like, “That sounds easy enough.”

I ordered truffle boxes online, bought candy papers at Michaels and planned to use leftover Martha Stewart silver ribbon to wrap them with. Leftover from what, you ask? Oh, by the way, I sewed us matching Christmas stockings this year!

I was looking for well-designed stockings and um, there ARE none. In the world. Well, that’s not true. I found a few cute ones on Etsy, but even Etsy had plenty of ugly ones. The cute ones I found sold out right after I decided I wanted them. So I took her idea and made gray and white felt stockings. They were fun. Dave had never had a stocking in his life (cultural difference!) and didn’t see the point. Until I filled it with chocolate bars on Christmas Eve. Dave stuffed mine with the entire Whole Foods Whole Body department, or at least most of it: yummy kids’ vitamins, coconut lip balm, locally made lotion, soap, etc. Ike, of course, got treats.

But back to the truffles for coworkers. Those same coworkers are obsessed with a book called Baked. I had borrowed it for some reason or another and turns out, they have a truffle recipe. A THREE-PAGE truffle recipe. Plus, a separate page with a description on how to temper chocolate. This recipe called for heavy cream and various other ingredients based on the truffle flavor. I decided to do 2 flavors: one using Paula’s Texas Orange (because I don’t like rum) and another with cayenne (because I do like spicy chocolate!) And of course, decided to not be daunted by complicated recipes that call for candy thermometers. Screw the easy way!

SO. I chopped a bunch of chocolate, mixed it with cream (and whatever else, the recipe is at work, sorry) and then let it set in the fridge.

Then I rolled it into balls.

Then I let them sit in the fridge for a few days until I was ready to temper the chocolate, a process which pretty much made me want to kill someone. Basically, you melt 3/4 of the chocolate you need in a metal bowl over a pot of water that has come to a boil, then been removed from the heat. You add the remaining chocolate and stir the chocolate until it melts. You remove the bowl from the heat and then stir with a spoon until you want to die. And then? Keep stirring until you ACTUALLY die. Or until the chocolate reaches 88°F, whichever comes first. When the chocolate coats the back of a spoon and is hard and shiny, not cloudy or streaked, then it’s ready for dipping. (There are actual chemical reasons for all of this, none of which I care about.) Then use a fondue fork to dip the truffles that have been in the freezer for 20 minutes* into the melted chocolate mixture.

This process took me forever to figure out. I stirred and stirred and stirred and the damn chocolate WOULD NOT HARDEN on the spoon. Until it did. Then I started dipping truffles and then the dipping chocolate got hard and I had to remelt the chocolate and stir and stir and stir until I was like, “FUCK THIS, THIS IS THE WORST IDEA I HAVE EVER HAD. NEXT TIME I AM USING MAGIC SHELL.” But I was almost done.

I ended up deciding that tempering chocolate is a joke. A thermometer, really? What they really mean is that you shouldn’t heat the chocolate up too much, and then you should dip your truffles before it hardens. That’s it. I am probably wrong and chocolate is probably more complex, but whatevs.

At any rate, after I dipped the truffles into the chocolate, I rolled them in a coating while they were still wet. Powdered sugar for the “orange” ones which unfortunately didn’t actually taste like orange; I probably should have used orange zest, too.I referred to them as the “plain” ones. And cane sugar + cocoa powder for the cayenne truffles. They ended up being too big for the truffle boxes I bought so I arranged them all on a plate. I WAS able to fit some of the smaller ones into boxes for our landlady and Dave’s boss. So here’s the final product.

They ended up being delicious and having that hard chocolate shell was perfect since the inside was so gooey and rich. I’ll probably try them again now that I’ve done it and don’t fear the tempering chocolate thing. Maybe try new flavors: lavender, basil, lime, etc. I bet I could heat the cream with those flavors, the same way you do with ice cream. Anyway, there you have it! Crossing it off the life list…

*Well, the truffles would NORMALLY sit in the freezer for 20 minutes, unless it takes you 2.5 hours to temper chocolate.