Experiments in the Kitchen and Life - Blogging / Raspberry Almond Truffles

So, today amidst the chaos of packing the house to move across the country, I have decided to start a blog. Yay, right? The idea came to me while I was in the beginning process of making truffles (the latest in what will probably eventually be a long line of "hey, I could do that!" experiments for me).

Now, normally I would just twitter about any random daily revelations. Yet as I was sitting at my dining room table, methodically filling in the molds with what will become the outer shells of my truffles while at the same time trying to figure out how to reduce my revelations to a 140-character tidbit, I realized the futility of the exercise.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love twitter and think that it has an excellent place (especially when the thoughts are truly random) but for something like this that 140-character limit was just too... limiting! So the idea for a blog was born. A place to record various experiments (either in the kitchen our outside of them as I go about other activities in my life) and whether or not they were successes. A place to note down observations - why I think something did or did not work - and perhaps (once I get some readers) get some feedback from others out there who have had similar experiments/experiences in their own life.

And that leads us to today - and the starting of this blog and the making of a batch of truffles! The life experiment will be seeing if I can keep up with blogging with any regularity and whether or not it proves a decent outlet for what I want to do with it. The kitchen experiment is still on-going as of this moment, but I will post again at every juncture with insights and/or notations on how the progress is going.

For today, I am attempting to make a batch of truffles for my Mother, who is coming up on Sunday - braving the 4 hour bus ride and a week spent as the honorary "new toy" for my two children so that she can help me out as my family prepares to move across the country (we're leaving on the 29th... eap!). I wanted to show her how much I appreciate her coming up and offering me assistance - and free babysitting! - and I thought that this would be a good way to do it. My mother is a candy nut, specifically chocolate, and I have yet to make her a batch of truffles. Truffle making caught my attention only this last holiday season and while I have made quite a few batches - and learned quite a few things! - my Mother being 4 hours away has meant that she has not yet received any.

For today's truffle batch I purchased a small bag of Nestle Tollhouse semi-sweet chocolate chips and a small bag of Nestle Tollhouse white chocolate chips. Normally I make my truffles using the Candy Melts that I can purchase at Michael's, but they do not have semi-sweet nor white chips so for this batch I had to do something else. I could have purchased higher-grade chocolate (like Ghiradelis) but I can't really taste all that much difference and since I would be flavoring the chocolate it just seemed like too much a waste of money to buy the "high-end" chocolate when the basic Nestle's would work just fine. Besides, I like Nestle's. They remind me of childhood and making chocolate chip cookies with my Mom.

I also purchased a small container or fresh raspberries. The plan, then, was to make semi-sweet chocolate shells, flavored with Almond Extract (which I already had purchased). Then to make a white chocolate/raspberry ganache (the raspberry would come from a reduction I had made a while ago as well using Smirnoff Vanilla Vodka, boiling the raspberries in the vodka until they had reduced down and then straining the entire thing), place a fresh raspberry (or a part of one at least) in each shell, fill the remaining space in the shell with the ganache, and then put on the bottom of the shell. Sounds somewhat easy, especially when you take into account that I have done a similar recipe before, using the same chocolate chips, crushed almonds and the raspberry reduction.

At this point, I have melted the semi-sweet chips in the microwave for a minute on high. I then stirred the chocolate until the entire batch was of a thick liquid consistency (no little chunks). Once that was done, I got out my candy molds, the almond extract, and sat down to make some shells.

This is where things got interesting. A phenomenon that I had experienced previously (using the Vanilla Candy Melts purchased at Michael's instead of the semi-sweet chips). Adding the almond extract (approximately a teaspoon) to the bowl of melted chocolate and stirring it in has caused the chocolate to change in consistency! I don't know why, but the addition of the almond extract (as opposed to any other flavoring that I have used up to this point which includes alcohol, the previously mentioned extract and the tiny vials of "flavoring" I purchased from Michael's which were made for this purpose) causes the chocolate and/or candy melts to go from a thick liquid to a dough-like almost-play-doh! It wasn't the end of the world - I merely used my fingers and proceeded to gleefully play in the chocolate as if it was play-doh and pressed it into the molds - but it was something that was odd. Why almond extract? What is it about that specific flavoring that causes the chips to react this way? The chocolate stayed gooey-er, a slight downside while trying to get it to stick to the molds, than the candy melts had done when I had had this problem previously. I don't know if that's because I added less almond this time (I don't know if I did or not - I don't really measure, just kinda throw some in and then taste it to see if I got a good mix), if the fact that these were actual chocolate chips as opposed to vanilla candy melts or if there is some other esoteric reason is responsible for the sticky consistency. If anyone reading this can tell me the reasoning behind that, I would love to hear it! Note: The star molds (see below) were by far the easiest to mold the play-doh-chocolate into.

Molds used for these truffles were: Star Candy Mold x2, Roses in Bloom Candy Mold, Peanut Butter Cup Mold and Rubber Duck Candy Mold

Update 5:15p - Having begun making the ganache, I was going to put the raspberry pieces in the shells only to find out that the raspberries I bought two days ago are all molding. I am disgruntled by this fact as it was only two days go that I bought them, but I will content myself with using the last of the raspberry reduction in the ganache and telling myself that it turned out perfectly tasty the last time without pieces of fruit in the center. But I'm still less than happy about it.

Update 5:50p - The shells have been filled with ganache and returned to the fridge. I will let them set up overnight and check on them tomorrow morning. I had more ganache than shells, so I went ahead and grabbed a fresh mold and just poured ganache straight into it. We'll see how well that works - when I use to only let them harden for 2 hours, it did not work at all, but now that I'm letting it stay in overnight I've found that it actually hardens up quite nicely. Until then!

Update 11:54a 6/20 - The ganache did not harden. It got more solid but it did not actually get hard. I only had enough chocolate play-doh left to cover 3 of the candy trays, so the others I put in the freezer to hopefully help them harden a bit more. The ones which got backs are back in the fridge. Step 3: Profit!  

Final Product - The ganache never did harden. The ones which got backs solidified fine and got popped out of their plastic trays. They are tasty. The ones without backs have been left in their plastic trays, but can be popped out and eaten as desired. The ones without any shell are goop stuck to the plastic tray that I'm not sure how I'm going to remove so that the tray can be properly cleaned. So, all-in-all, this experiment was a Learning Experience.