1-Caramel Chocolate-making Workshop: Black Truffle

9th February 2012. Written by Vinleon. Photos by Xinli.

We start off this 3-part chocolate-making series with the yummiest of the lot (in my humble opinion) - Black Truffle.

You'll need:

440g   Valrhona guanaja 70% chocolate

250g   Whipped cream

25g     Trimoline

50g     Unsalted butter

600g   Coated chocolate for shell

300g   Cocoa powder

How to transform ingredients into yummy Black Truffles:

1. Heat the Valrhona guanaja 70% chocolate buttons over a hot water bath (strictly no direct heat when handling chocolates!).

2. Stir in whipped cream and trimoline into the other portion that is still in the water bath. Refrigerate mixture for an hour to yield ganache.

3. Melt the chocolate meant for the chocolate shell, add butter to this portion and stir.

4. Roll ganache into small balls, dipping each into the chocolate shell mixture. Quickly put onto a tray of cocoa powder and shake vigorously to coat.

5. Box it up and surprise your better half.

Now as easy as the steps sound, I highly recommend that you give this recipe a trial run first before making a gift batch. You may have noticed that in step 2, "small portion" is subjective (Chef Ivan does it with experience, no measurements needed). What can potentially go wrong is with the consistency of the ganache. Too much chocolate added to it and it'll harden, too little and it won't hold its shape.

Look out for other yum yum recipes!

EDIT: Please note the above changes for point 2 and 3. I forgot about the existence of the chocolate for the shell.