Truffles are a doddle; there’s very little cooking involved, precious few ingredients and they’re almost, almost fool proof, even the cack-handed and dexterously challenged can turn out a decent truffle and call it ‘rustic’.
The recipe here is for the basic model prepared in the simplest way; just hot cream poured over broken chocolate and shaped by hand. Yes there’s a bit of butter chucked in for texture, and the cream is sweetened with sugar, but other than stirring and chilling it really is that easy.
Now having said all of that, it’s worth pointing out that rolling and shaping chocolate truffles by hand is not the sort of job to start if you need to take a phone call or answer the door at any point; have everything you need to hand before you begin.
You can embellish your truffles in any number of ways with various coatings and introduce flavours simply by infusing the cream with spices, herbs or booze. My advice would be to start with the basic recipe and don’t get carried away, just dust them in cocoa powder for now until you’re happy the recipe works for you and then you can let rip.
Ingredients
(makes 12 – 16)
100ml double cream
50g soft light brown sugar
2 x tablespoons brandy/rum/Tia Maria (optional)
115g dark chocolate, at least 70% cocoa
25g salted butter at room temperature
Cocoa powder for dusting
Heat the cream over a gentle heat with the sugar until it reaches simmering point and the sugar has melted. Remove from the heat and add the liqueur if using.
Break or chop the chocolate into small pieces into a bowl and add the butter.
Pour over the hot cream and stir until you have a smooth paste. If the chocolate hasn’t melted fully, fill the pan you heated the cream in with an inch of water, put it back over the heat and place the bowl on top and continue to stir until it does.
Leave the bowl to cool to room temperature, and then refrigerate for 1½ – 2 hours. If the chocolate is too cold and sets too hard you’ll have a hard time shaping the truffles, it needs to be reasonably pliable so check it, it may need slightly longer in the fridge.
Shape the truffles as you wish, and dust in cocoa powder. Keep them refrigerated for up to 3 days.