I Make Truffles for the First Time, and They Are Ugly

Truffle? 

This significant Beetle Branch Out began because the Dining Section of the New York Times last week was devoted to ice cream, and as I glanced disparagingly through it muttering things like "stupid ice cream" and "it's so cold" and "why would you devote an entire thing to ice cream" and "ugh, really . . . banana, pistachio, jalapeno pepper WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE" I happened upon THIS. Namely, Chocolate Ganache. 

Now, it wasn't so much attractive because I wanted to make a cake and frost it with ganache, and definitely not so much that I wanted to have ice cream and pour ganache over the top. 

For the record. In my slightly psychotic and definitely minority opinion, ice cream is too sweet, too sticky, and too cold. Even before it was relegated to the "Beetle Bad List" I wasn't a huge fan. It made my teeth hurt, my hands always got all gluey and gross and there was NEVER a place to wash them on the boardwalk or beach or whatever, those tiny little shreddy paper napkins they gave you were completely useless, and shortly after finishing my cone or my cup I became too cold to continue "enjoying my harbourside stroll" or whatever I was supposed to be doing at the time. There was a brief period when I was little when I did legitimately love it and every summer consumed my weight in chocolate soft serve at Dairy Queen, but soon enough my inherent jerk took over and I became the obnoxious, sweatshirt wearing, killjoy I am today. 

Anyway. Where was I. Oh yes. Ice cream. Ganache. TRUFFLES. 

I started reading the article thinking that I would mentally file it for future cake-icing purposes, but then I happened upon the magical phrase ""chill it, then roll it into balls and dust with cocoa powder to make truffles." And I realised that I absolutely HAD to try. 

I'm ashamed to say that I've made it this long without making truffles. Because. Do you have any idea how easy they are? 

THEY'RE REALLY EASY.  

And I have to say, on a day that was 90 degrees with what felt like 100% humidity, NOT standing in front of a hot oven was kind of amazing. Bonus was that working with chilled balls of chocolate awesomeness meant that making them actually cooled me off.

Lesson of the Day: if you are hot and don't want to cook but want something delicious, make ganache truffles!

So. The basic ganache recipe is bittersweet chocolate and heavy cream, which is then brought to the desired temperature and corresponding consistency. The New York Times one that I've linked to above added sugar, vanilla extract, espresso, and a pinch of coarse salt. I balked at adding the sugar, initially, because if there's one thing that bittersweet chocolate absolutely DOESN'T need, it's sugar, that's kind of the point of it, it's perfect and delicious and legitimately the best chocolate in the universe as it is, and then I started looking at the recipe and realised that perhaps I should do a bit of outside research.

Lo and behold, I found more ganache truffle and bittersweet truffle recipes that kept the ingredients to bare three: Bittersweet chocolate, heavy cream, vanilla extract. I went with that.

INGREDIENTS

• 14 oz bittersweet chocolate
• 3/4 cup heavy cream
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

I melted the chocolate in the microwave because honestly it's a better way to do it, and ACTUAL CHEFS say that, you don't burn it, it's consistent heat, and it's a hell of a lot easier. I brought the cream to slightly warmer than room temperature (also in the microwave) before I stirred it into the chocolate so that it wouldn't make chocolate clumps.* Then added the vanilla last and gave it a few spins with a big spoon until it was a glorious, shiny, delicious smelling mass.

*it took me FAR too long to realise that this was my problem and how easy of a fix it actually was. DUH.

Then I popped it in the fridge for a few hours, did a few household chores, went for a run, etc, and came back to it before dinner. 

The tricky part, I knew, would be making the balls themselves. Whenever you go into Maison du Chocolate or Vosges or similar, you are greeted by these absolutely perfectly symmetrical truffles that I swear were made by little chocolate elves because no actual human could possibly be that talented. I do NOT own a melon baller* and working with only teaspoons and tablespoons I knew that they were going to be . . . well . . . 

*I didn't at the time. Thanks to amazon.com, I do now. 

But working with two teaspoons and a large bowl of cocoa powder, I sort of manhandled them into sort resemble spherical objects that sort of looked like truffles. Or at least some of them did. If you squinted. And I told you what they were first. 

But you know what? I've decided that if everyone in Brooklyn and Seattle can have "hand crafted artisinal truffles" then I jolly well can too. So. These have PERSONALITY. These weren't made by an enslaved chocolate elf. These were made by a BEETLE and each one has it's own little story behind it and THAT'S why some look like golf balls and some look like smashed chestnuts and some look like fossilized dinosaur eggs and some even look like those things that the giant mantises were guarding under Tokyo in the latest Godzilla movie. 

THEY'RE INDIVIDUAL. THAT'S WHAT I'M SAYING. 

I would like to think I got better as I went along and gained confidence, but sadly, I think it was actually the reverse. The ones that actually DID look like fossilized triceratops babies were the last five I made. 

BUT, dear reader, they are quite simple, they require only a microwave and some spoons (and if you have a melon baller, so much the better) and if they turn out better than mine I bet they would be quite pretty too. 

Remember that dumb line about love meaning never to have to say you're sorry?

Well.

"Love means that your parents, your husbands, wives, children, your Lovely Librarians . . . Love means that they still have to like you even if the truffles you give them are ugly. Even AFTER you say you're sorry."