truffles nefarious

TRUFFLES NEFARIOUS
Insides of truffles:

12 oz good chocolate cut in small pieces, but chocolate chips work just fine (if you use 10 oz & 3 tbsp butter, the truffles will taste even better but will be VERY soft and difficult to work with)
4 tbsp butter

1/2 c. cream

1 tbsp. dark corn syrup

4 tbsp maraschino cherry juice

2/3 c. maraschino cherries, finely chopped

Combine chocolate and butter. Zap for 30 seconds in microwave, stir, zap another 30 seconds and stir.

Meanwhile, heat cream & dark corn syrup in a heavy saucepan on the stove until it’s just going to start to simmer.

Pour cream over chocolate. Let stand 2 minutes or so. Stir until well-blended.

Add maraschino cherries and juice and stir in completely.

Pour into an 8×8 baking dish (thanks Alton Brown for this tip) and let cool in the refrigerator. It’s a tricky judgement call on exactly how long. You want to be able to use a melon baller to cut out little balls; if it’s too hard the balls tend to fragment, too soft and they won’t hold their shape enough. Somewhere between 30-60 minutes typically. I still mess it up all the time.

Using a melon baller, carve balls of chocolate out (use another spoon to ease them out of the melon baller) and place them on parchment paper on a cookie sheet. THIS SOUNDS SO EASY. HA. Return to refrigerator until firm, a good hour or so.

Outside of truffles:
Melt a bag of chocolate chips or good quality baking chocolate and 1 tbsp butter over a VERY low heat (Alton Brown says not above 92 degrees). I find that I can do the zap and stir technique in the microwave as above, then finish melting in a heavy glass bowl set inside my electric fondue pot, set to its lowest setting, while I stir.

Dip truffle insides into this chocolate. THIS IS THE FUN PART. IT’S EVEN FUNNER THAN TRYING TO MAKE THE BLASTED BALLS. I have read many tips to make this part easier, and so far none of them work. What I do is use two toothpicks to dip each ball into the melted chocolate, roll it around, and take it back out to set on the parchment paper.

Some people may have noticed from the picture that my truffles just don’t look like Godiva’s. You KNOW Godiva mass produces, so I don’t even want to hear about it. However, you are welcome not to follow my toothpick method and experiment with other methods that might conceivably end up with a more elegant final product.

GOOD LUCK.

Let cool–room temperature is fine now–on parchment paper. Eat.

OR sacrifice yourself to your precious fans, pack them up in boxes, and send them out as REWARDS for nefariety, Boobs Stuck Under Beds in Paris stories, FAb pick weeks…or you could always send them to your FAVORITE AUTHOR.