Homemade Chocolate Truffles

This weekend Bertie’s Bakery embarked on a whole new journey!

Chocolate truffles!

I love chocolate truffles, and I have always wanted to learn more about the art of tempering chocolate, so with that I took the plunge into a day of chocolate! There were a lot of lessons learned, but I will say that the time spent was well worth it as the end product was a huge success!

I started with about a pound of chocolate. The milk chocolate was for the centers and the dark chocolate was for the outer shell. The biggest tip that I can offer about chocolate truffles is that you MUST be organized! Prepping the chocolate, measuring the weights, having all of your tools ready, etc. is key to being successful. Once you start heating your chocolate, there is no turning back (or time to run around your kitchen looking for you favorite spatula!).

Once the milk chocolate ganache was made I pressed plastic wrap down onto the top layer of the chocolate.  This helps protect it from getting a thicker skin on top as it cools.

Then using my mini cookie scoop (1.5mm) I scooped endless amounts of ganache onto a parchment paper lined sheet pan.

Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with plain milk chocolate, but I figured this was going to make a lot of truffles and it might be nice to change it up a little. The pan above has: 1) Plain mild chocolate 2) caramel center, 3) pistachio center, and 4) dark chocolate coffee.

Since these rough scoops of ganache need to be hand rolled into nicer, rounder balls, I pushed the pistachios a little further down and popped them back into the fridge to cool. Once they come out cold and a little firm they are much much easier to handle and shape.

I do apologize that there are no pictures of the actual dipping process, but the Boss was off on his trail run and I only have so many hands to balance the delicate and time sensitive steps! Hopefully you can forgive me and will settle for pictures of the final product???

Going from the top row and working our way down (on the photo below):

The green sprinkles on top are the pistachio.
The coco powder dust is the pure milk chocolate.
The dark chocolate drizzle is the dark chocolate coffee.
The white drizzle is the caramel filled ganache center.

Finally I packaged the chocolates up (what was left of them) and disbursed them to friends! I am excited! The flavors worked out fantastic, and I can’t stop thinking about what to put in the next batch!

I’m thinking a peanut butter ganache center is going to be a must! What about you?