I'm Making A Ganache?

Somebody Pass Me My Double Boiler...


So this weekend I was stumbling through the Godiva Chocolatier website looking at all of the fancy boxes of stuff they want to sell me in anticipation of St. Valentines Day.

I've been getting at least one e-mail per day from them and Proflowers and FTD for the past six weeks.

Any way, looking at my schedule this week I have to wait on rebuild kits for the new valve order so I have a couple of days to fool around with the "Jamaican Me Cajun Green Butt Chili Shack" design, and I figure that since Pat had perfected the recipe for home made truffles over the past couple of years that it was time for me to show her how to do it better to use all of the tools we have special purchased to handle chocolate in our kitchen.

I even bought one hundred fancy foil covered boxes last year sized to hold two truffles each in their little paper cups.

Getting back to my title, a "Ganache" is the French term for what you get by combining boiling heavy cream and melted chocolate.

Depending on the proportions you can get something which can be used to ice a cake, or by making a thicker mixture you get that rich, soft stuff you find inside Truffles and other candies.

The thing about making your own truffles is that you have to have cool temperatures and low humidity or they won't set up properly. Winter in Knoxtown must be good for something, and truffle making is one of those things.

So any way, I'm thinking about making four kinds of Truffles this week...plain chocolate with a powdered coco dusting on the outside, a chocolate raspberry flavored truffle with a hard dark chocolate coating, a chocolate amaretto truffle with toasted almond crumbles on the outside, and probably an orange liqueur flavored chocolate truffle with a hard white chocolate coating.

Each has to be processed in individual batches because you have a limited working time and don't have time to be fooling around adding stuff while things are cooling off and setting up.

On that note, I guess that it's time to finish some paperwork and go dirty up the kitchen I guess...

photos to follow...

MORE:...2:00 PM

I've discovered the secret of the PERFECT Truffle!!!

Ready?

Go into your Kitchen.

Get out your credit card.

Dial the 1-800 Godiva phone number (or go on-line)

Place your order.

The other way is to melt about twenty dollars worth of fancy chocolate in a bowl, dump scalding cream over it, stand around outside the refrigerator for an hour and one half, then utter these sounds before you begin...

"Ah hu eeh haah aaahh hhuuu eeh hoo eeh hoo aaaaahhhhhhhhhhHHHHH."

(you're going to end up screaming something and at least that phrase is rated PG...)

You see, everything goes well until you start scooping out your cold set Ganache from your refrigerated bowl...then the process degenerates up there in complexity with things like solving Differential Equations and herding cats.

Seriously, as far as I can tell it's nigh onto an impossible task getting the stuff out on a sheet of waxed paper in uniform sized balls that don't melt and stick to your hands and the the inside of closed cabinet doors and your eyelids and every other surface within a 6 foot perimeter.

I've got to go back now and mop the ceiling and try to wrestle this stuff into some sort of presentable form.

Wish me luck