Truffle Making!!

After introductions and orientation on Friday, we officially began our expedition with a truffle-making class at Choco Museo with our energetic choco-chef, Gladys, who gave us a hands-on lesson in two kinds of truffles.

For the first, more traditional ones we first prepped the various coatings: chopped almonds and peanuts, smashed M&Ms, Oreo cookie crumbs (which required scraping out and discarding all the filling), plus quinoa for crunch, cinnamon, sprinkles, chili powder and coca leaf.  Then we made a traditional ganache of chocolate and condensed milk, but added cherimoya, a fruit native to the Andes. The flesh is very sweet and soft, and removing the seeds is tedious, but it has a lovely flavor sort of like a cross between a banana and a pineapple. In ganache it added a mysterious flavor that was quite exotic.

Once the ganache was chilled we rolled them in balls and coated them to our individual liking. Here are mine.

Quinoa, M&Ms, cinnamon, coca leaf, Oreos, chili

The second process was a bit more complicated, as we first had to temper chocolate, then line shallow shells with the chocolate and refrigerate them. The next step was to fill the chilled shells with ganache and return them to the fridge, after which they came out looking like this:

Chocolate cases with chocolate-cherimoya ganache

Once the chilling was complete, Gladys carefully poured more tempered chocolate over the molds and back they went for a cool-down. Finally, after they were completely chilled, we inverted the molds onto a cutting board and trimmed off the overflow, resulting in these lovely shining treats:

With tempered chocolate coating

I’m happy to report that these truffles are delectable. And it was a bonus to learn how to prepare a cherimoya (which I’ve seen in Whole Foods). They’re simple to break apart, and after you’ve peeled the skin away it’s just a matter of removing the seeds from the soft, slippery flesh. (Unfortunately, my picture of a split cherimoya wouldn’t upload.) I think they’ll be good in smoothies and maybe even cakes (cherimoya pound cake, anyone?).