Tasty Tuesday - Perfect Truffles

A good friend of mine talked me into doing a cooking class with her. It was chocolate and champagne, so how do I say no? I didn't, obviously. I found out later that the class was a truffle making class - mmmm yum! I'd made truffles before, but who cares. We were encouraged to bring our own ingredients to use for the truffles, which I thought was a really fun idea.

In the end, we had vanilla, orange, peppermint, Kahlua, cinnamon, salt truffles, and more. I liked most of them, but to be honest, the white truffle salt truffles I made were possibly my favorite.

Bonus? I have a lot of Christmas gifts to give from bus drivers to therapists to teachers and assistants to gymnastics and tae kwon do instructors. I'm a little afraid to do a full count. Doing presents for that many people is really more than I can afford or justify. But this? This is my solution. I am making truffles for everyone, boxing them up nicely, and passing them along. Tell me these don't look perfect?

They are super easy and relatively inexpensive, too. My friend who took the class with me? She isn't my most domestic friend, and she's going to make them again. So can you....

Perfect Truffles

Ingredients:
9 oz bittersweet chocolate (Trader Joe's has great stuff for a reasonable price)
1 T unsweeted cocoa powder
4 oz butter
1/3 c heavy cream
1 t sea salt
1 t oil - or so

Directions:
Chop 7 oz chocolate and butter into small pieces. Add all the cocoa and place them into a cmall stainless steel bowl. Heat in a 200 degree (lowest it goes) oven for about five minutes. Don't let it burn!

In a small saucepan, heat the cream to a boil. Remove from the heat and pour over your chocolate mixture. Let it sit for a minute or two, then stir gently. Add the salt (or your other flavoring*) and stir until the mixture is smooth and shiny.

Chill in the bowl for 30 minutes in a fridge until it is solidified enough to work with. Use a cookie scoop (#60) or a spoon to form the truffles. Place them on parchment paper or a sil pat. Chill again for another five to ten minutes.

While they are chilling a second time, melt the last 2 oz chopped chocolate gently in a double boiler (or in a microwave, checking every 20 seconds). Slowly drizzle in a little oil until it gets to a smooth consistency that is pourable but not super thin - you want it to stick to the truffles.

Use a fork to dip the truffles into the chocolate coating, roll them to cover, then return them to the sil pat. Sprinkle a little of your salt or other flavoring atop the melted chocolate and let harden.

* You can also use 1/2-1 t of a liquid flavoring in place of the salt such as Bailey's or expresso or vanilla or whatever sounds good to you. Or use 1/2 t of cinnamon, etc. Instead of dipping in melted chocolate, you can also roll them in more of the cocoa (if you do cinnamon as a filling, mix some cinnamon into your cocoa for an extra pop).

Enjoy this and more at Tempt My Tummy Tuesday with Blessed With Grace!

Current Giveaways:
$25 Build-A-Bear Workshop gift card here
Thomas and Friends Adventure on Misty Island Mega Blocks set here
Lawry's Complete Meal Ideas Gift Pack with casserole here
The Dolphin: Story of a Dreamer DVD with 2 winners here

Tasty Tuesday - Chocolate Drizzled Popcorn

Today is the last PTO meeting of the year. The president traditionally gives a small gift to the Executive Board. I've been trying to figure out what to do this year, as I want to do something meaningful but not chintzy but I have ten people to buy for, so I refuse to go all out.

I came up with what I hope is a brilliant solution. And if they don't like it, then I'm going to eat it myself. Ta da!



I made chocolate drizzled popcorn. YUM! (Not that I sampled any myself, of course.) And totally easy. I'm now debating doing the same thing for teacher gifts at the end of the year since we have a teacher, two aides, and three to four therapists per child, which gets awfully expensive. Oh, plus two bus drivers per child. Yep, I think we're going down this road.

Chocolate Drizzled Popcorn

Ingredients:
Olive oil
Popcorn kernals
Salt
Chocolate melting discs

Directions:
First, make your popcorn. I use the largest metal bowl I can find -- thank you IKEA, btw. I follow the Alton Brown methodology, and boy does it make good and easy popcorn.

Pour just enough oil in the bottom of the bowl to cover it, then add kernals atop it. Cover the bowl with tin foil, and poke some holes in it. Turn the stove on to medium/medium high, and start shaking. Shake, shake, shake until it all stops popping.

Immediately add just enough salt to taste. If you do it while the popcorn is hot, it sticks better without being overly salty. You can, of course, stop here, but ummm go for the best part.

Lay the popcorn on the nonstick surface in a thin layer, like a sil pat or waxed paper. While it is cooling (you want the popcorn to be cool when you put the chocolate on it), melt the chocolate over low heat in a heavy pan (I love my little Le Creuset) or double boiler.

Use a spatula to scoop up just a little of the chocolate, and then drizzle the chocolate over the popcorn. You'll need to shake the spatula like you're trying to get dust off a rug to get the last of the chocolate off it, but that also makes for the best drizzles. Doing small bits of chocolate at a time works best, not that I'd know!

If you get clumps of chocolate, no worries. Just use your spatula to mix up the popcorn, distributing the chocolate. You can put on as much or as little chocolate as you like. You can also mix white and regular chocolates to make it extra fancy. Since it was 10:30 last night before I was halfway done, I declined to do this.



Fingers crossed that everyone on the PTO likes my: The PTO is just a hard kernel with promise without you. Your energy and life make it burst open with opportunity, turning it into a special sweet treat for all the students there. What do you think?

And of course, as always go check out this week's Tempt My Tummy Tuesday with Blessed With Grace!

Enjoy!