Chocolate Liqueur Truffles

Oh wow these were a pain to make! (You enjoyed it really! - Ed) Stress, rushed photos, chocolate everywhere... but, if you make them properly, they're very, very easy and absolutely gorgeous!
These are from Ruth Clemens's The Pink Whisk where you can find them looking very special and done properly, just how I will do them next time. On Ruth's blog version you'll notice the line "After a lot of trial and error...." This, is my trial and error.

I'll get to why they were a pain later, but firstly, here is how I will do them next time :)

For the filling:

• 300g Plain (50% cocoa is fine, don't use G&B 70% apparently), or milk chocolate
• 200ml Double cream
• 2 tbsp Liqueur

For the coating:

• 200g Plain (As high % cocoa as you like), or milk chocolate
• Any decorations eg Glitter, white choc gratings/drizzlings

Method:

1.  Pour the cream into a saucepan on a medium heat.
2. Chop up the 300g chocolate into small pieces.
3. When the cream starts to bubble around the edges of the saucepan add the chopped chocolate and let sit for a few minutes.
4. Then stir well until glossy.
5. Add the liqueur of choice, or omit all together, and mix well.
6. Pour the mix into a bowl or tray, cover with clingfilm, allow to cool. Then move to fridge to set for a couple of hours.
7. When set, scoop out large marble sized blobs of mix with a spoon (I'm going to try a round measuring spoon next time like a melon-baller) and form into rough shaped balls, place these on grease proof paper either on a wire rack or tray. Place back in the fridge for 30 mins
8. Rinse off your hands in-between balls if they get too chocolatey :)
9. Take a few at a time out of the fridge and, rolling between your hands, make neater ball shapes and place these on a wire rack. The smaller the balls the smaller the mesh needs to be on the rack. When all the balls are done, place back in the fridge while you melt more chocolate.
10. Melt the 200g chocolate in a bowl over a saucepan of boiling water, or blipped in a microwave 30 secs at a time until almost all chocolate is liquid. Take off of the heat and stir until all the chocolate is melted. I then sat the bowl back over a saucepan of hot tap water to stop it cooling too quickly.
11. Melt some white chocolate if required for decoration.
12. Take the rack of truffle balls from the fridge and sit on top of a sheet of greaseproof paper.
13. Spoon the liquid chocolate over the truffle balls so they are completely coated.
14. Before the chocolate sets completely add any extra decoration eg, glitter, drizzled white chocolate.
15. When the chocolate has solidified move the rack to the fridge to finish setting.
16. The chocolate on the paper underneath the rack can be spread out and allowed to set to be kept for another time, or eaten :)
17. These will keep for a fortnight at room temp, or double wrap to seal from moisture and smells and kept in the fridge. Bring back to room temp before unwrapping and munching.

 

Now, the reason that things went a bit breasts-up for me was that I didn't have a suitable cooling rack for the little balls to sit on when pouring chocolate over them, so I decided that I was going to hold them on cocktail sticks while dipping and dripping choc over them. The thing was to devise a way of standing the now lollipop truffles up to cool and this is how...

...came into being. What better than a loo roll covered in baking paper to cool off your lollipop truffles!

 This kind of worked ok apart from the oversight that I either had to hold the truffles over the melted chocolate a bloody long time until excess dripped off, or I could end up with chocolate cocktail sticks as well. (I'm not even going to discuss the idea of a chocolate splattered loo roll (Good! - Ed)) To do all the balls took a very, very, long time during which I dreamt many times of a lovely fine meshed cooling rack, and peered out the corner of my eye at some bread stick dough that was desperate to be made into bread sticks!

Next time, when I have my cooling rack I'll be using white chocolate for decoration. According to Ruth, this one from Sainsburys is good for the job :)

After munching sooo many of these I thought I'd go for a bit of sweet stuff... 

Starting off with the Lou Reed fan baiting Cowboy Junkies - Sweet Jane.

 Mixed in with some lovely gooey classic Blues Brothers - Sweet Home Chicago

Coated in the lush shiny encapsulating The Beloved - Sweet Harmony

(You sure as hell aren't going to have bodies like these if you eat too many of these truffles :D)