Chocolate Truffles

Today we're going to do something completely different! Usually when I post a recipe, it's because I think you should try it after I've made it. Today is different. Today I'm posting a recipe because I put a lot of time, effort, and money into it, but I'm warning you that you should probably just skip right on by. Tasty? Absolutely. A total PITA? You betcha! And entirely too expensive for the results.

Shall we? This is from How Sweet It Is, and it was originally called Pop Rocks Firecracker Truffles.

The basic truffle ingredients are few and simple. Milk chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, heavy cream, and vanilla. The other ingredients you see there are what I was going to roll my truffles in as opposed to Pop Rocks. It's not that I didn't see the high amusement factor in rolling them in Pop Rocks, it's that I wanted to make something people would actually eat as opposed to freaking out when it started exploding in their mouths. We did debate making them with Pop Rocks and taking them to the bar one night, however.

First step, and so far, so good. Chop the chocolate and put it in a large bowl. I got this!

Next, heat the cream until it starts bubbling, then pour it over the chocolate and let it stand 30 seconds before you add the vanilla and start stirring. Stir, and stir, and stir, until...

Beautiful chocolate ganache! It's incredibly thick, and when I licked the spoon I have to admit it was very, very tasty. I was so very excited I could hardly wait for the next step!

The first indication that something was amiss was when I stuck the spoon into the chocolate. Or, rather, when I could *not* stick the spoon into the chocolate. So I thought maybe I'd left it in the refrigerator a little too long (it was more like 5 hours instead of 1-2). What you see in the picture above is how hard the chocolate was after I'd left it out on the counter in my kitchen for THREE HOURS, oven going the whole time while I did other baking. It was never going to soften again unless I melted it and started over.

I chose not to. Instead, I broke and chiseled small pieces of the chocolate off, then sort of melted their outside edges with the heat from my hands until they were a distant cousin to ball-shaped. The melting helped a great deal when I tried to roll them in coatings as well, since there was no way anything was sticking to the hard chocolate.

If you count, you'll see that there are 39 truffles here. I did not eat any before I took the picture. I did not eat any of the melted chocolate except what I couldn't get off the spoon. I did not even lose much chocolate as it melted on my hands.

What I did do was double the batch. Instead of a total of 8 ounces of chocolate, I had 16. The original recipe says it makes 25-30 nickel-sized truffles. Mine are really close to that size, maybe a trifle larger, and I got 39.

So... instead of posting the recipe like I usually do, I'm just going to post the link again. You can click on it if you want, but I'd recommend walking right on by this one. There are too many other truffle recipes that are easier, less messy, less impossible to work with, and that taste fabulous (for example, the Coconut Truffles from Betty Crocker I posted the other day, which can be made with different extracts and coatings).

I'm chalking this one up to a learning experience. At least they're tasty!

Here's the recipe link: Pop Rocks Firecracker Truffles