You can make the honey truffles with any honey you like, but I used Zambian honey from Zambezi. I met the woman who imports it at the Fancy Food Show this year, and loved her story. She was in Zambia with the Peace Corps and loved the honey there, and started up the import business of it when she moved back to the U.S. I have a carboy full of mead made with it brewing up right now, half of which will go straight to her as soon as it is ready.

In the meantime, I’ve been making these honey truffles nonstop, and they have been a hit with everyone who tried them, including everyone wandered into the VIP Suite at SalonCon, which we catered earlier this month.

Also, Dave finally put together a craft blog for me to post the inedible things I make when my fingers start itching and my brain starts sizzling. He named it Rumquat after the rum ganache and kumquat marmalade filled truffles I was making the night he put the site together.

I’m in the airport on my way to the California (mostly Berkeley, Mountain View, and San Francisco) for a week, my second trip off to visit Mike Develin (mostly named here because someday I’m going to get a wacky email from someone saying, “Hey, I know Mike! You know him, too? Let’s chat and cause wacky hijinks to occur!”). We entirely failed to make reservations for any exciting restaurants, but I’m mostly interested in time spent with friends wandering by the beach, in any event. Still, if you can think of any good foodie spots thereabouts that don’t require reservations made way in advance, please let me know!

Archives
2007: Chewy Cherry Almond Chocolate Chip Cookies
2006: Dave’s Sour Cherry Barbecue Sauce and Baby Back Ribs


Zambian Honey Truffles
(adapted from Chocolates & Confections by Peter P. Greweling)
70 g Zambian honey
20 g butter, soft
450 g dark chocolate, tempered, chopped (for the ganache)
225 g heavy cream
More chocolate for dipping and making bases
More Zambian honey for filling the truffles

Chop the ganache chocolate and set it aside in a bowl.

Stir together the honey and heavy cream together in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then remove from the heat and pour the cream mixture over the chocolate.

Stir the chocolate into the cream as it melts from the heat of the cream, creating a ganache/emulsion. Make sure all the chocolate has melted. If it hasn’t, melt it very very gently over a warm water bath as needed.

Stir in the butter next, making sure that it is entirely incorporated.

Pour onto a baking sheet in a thin layer, and cover with plastic wrap directly touching the ganache. Set it aside until it reaches a “slightly firm, plastic consistency,” which should take about an hour.

In the meantime, temper at least some of the chocolate you have for dipping. The best guidelines I’ve ever found on how to temper chocolate are by David Lebovitz, and you can read them here. The details he explains that made it finally make sense for me were using big chunks of seed chocolate instead of smaller chopped pieces, and removing what’s left of them once your chocolate is tempered instead of worrying about melting them in completely.

Spread it out about 2 mm thick over parchment paper on two normal (half sheet) size baking sheets. When it is about 90% set, use a round cookie cutter to cut out disks about 1″ diameter. I actually use a large pastry tip, because my cookie cutters are all too big at the moment.

Let the chocolate finish setting. Do not remove it from the parchment paper.

Stir the ganache and fill it into a pastry bag with a small plain round tip. Pipe a circle of ganache around the perimeter of each chocolate disk. Fill the center of each ganache circle with more Zambian honey. Then pipe increasingly smaller concentric circles on top of the first to create a sort of beehive shape.

Leave them alone to set until they’re firm enough to handle. I did this by sticking them in the fridge for a few minutes (or overnight, when it got too late to finish the project in a single day).

Temper your dipping chocolate and dip the pieces. Put them on parchment paper until they set.

Rumquat Truffles
Same as above, but use rum ganache (recipe below) instead of honey ganache and kumquat marmalade (my recipe is available here) instead of extra honey for filling.

Rum Ganache
(adapted from Chocolates & Confections by Peter P. Greweling)
430 g dark chocolate, tempered, chopped (for the ganache)
180 g heavy cream
60 g glucose or light corn syrup
20 g butter, soft
30 g dark rum

Chop the chocolate and set it aside in a bowl.

Stir together the glucose/corn syrup and heavy cream together in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then remove from the heat and pour the cream mixture over the chocolate.

Stir the chocolate into the cream as it melts from the heat of the cream, creating a ganache/emulsion. Make sure all the chocolate has melted. If it hasn’t, melt it very very gently over a warm water bath as needed.

Stir in the butter next, making sure that it is entirely incorporated.

Add the rum in steady stream, stirring constantly until it is also entirely incorporated.

Pour onto a baking sheet in a thin layer, and cover with plastic wrap directly touching the ganache. Set it aside until it reaches a “slightly firm, plastic consistency,” which should take about an hour.

Posted by Danielle in Chocolate, Sweets on September 24th, 2008 | 7 Comments » | Permalink