Kitchen Project #123: All About Truffles

Perfect Christmas crafting with our new guest author, Octavia!

Hello,

Welcome to today’s edition of Kitchen Projects. Thank you so much for being here.

Today I have the absolute joy of introducing you to a new voice in the world of Kitchen Projects: Chocolatier Octavia Lamb, who joins us today for a very Christmas appropriate topic: Truffles. Octavia introduces us to working with chocolate at home ft. Dark Milk hand rolled cocoa dusted truffles.

As an absolute bonus, over on KP+, Octavia takes you through how to temper chocolate, PLUS two more stunning recipes for you: Salted Caramel Dark Chocolate truffles and Build-Your-Own Black Forest Truffles. UNBELIEVABLE SCENES! Click here to make them.

What’s KP+? Well, it’s the level-up version of this newsletter. By joining KP+, you will support the writing and research that goes into the newsletter (including the commissioning - and fair payment - of all the writers), join a growing community, access extra content (inc., the entire archive) and more. Subscribing is easy and only costs £5 per month. Why not give it a go? Come and join the gang!

Love,
Nicola

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Let’s bake together? Join me for an Instagram live at 5:30pm UK time!

Join me on @thehappyfoodie later today (5:30PM UK time) for a live cookalong of these sticky brown butter marmalade steamed puddings, a recipe I’ve developed especially for this bakealong/hang out! I’ll also be answering questions about Christmas baking, problem solving any dessert questions you have and telling you a bit more about my debut book, SIFT, which is out next year and available to pre-order now. I hope to see you there!

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Introducing: Octavia Lamb

I’ll say it again and again, there’s nothing I love more than learning! And though I love investigating here on the newsletter, there are some subjects I like to leave to the experts. I’ve been looking for someone to teach us all about chocolate here on Kitchen Projects and I’m thrilled to introduce you to the brilliant Octavia Lamb. (no relation btw, though I wish we were related so I might share some of her chocolate skills! Alas no.)

Some of Octavia's chocolates

I’ve known Octavia for a while, and I’ve watched her blossom from a passionate home chocolate maker, to working in a an artisanal chocolate factory (yes yes, i know wonka comes out this weekend!) to launching her own business, Octavia Chocolates, and co-hosting chocolate focused pop-ups. After I was lucky enough to finally try her chocolates at Alexina Anatole’s book launch a few months ago and I sent her a message asking her to write for Kitchen Projects the next day. Trust me, she knows her stuff.

Octavia’s passion and curiosity for chocolate is irresistible and I’ve no doubt we’ve a lot to learn from her. And with that, I’ll hand you over to her. Btw, you should totally follow her on instagram to keep up to date with her chocolate adventures / drops!

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The Truffle Shuffle

by Octavia Lamb

Truffles in motion. Photo credit Octavia Lamb

Today, poetically, we will be covering the first thing that got me hooked on chocolate making: hand-rolled truffles, sumptuous, velvety mouthfuls of ganache. Ganache is thought to have been created serendipitously in roughly 1850 by an apprentice pâtissier in Paris who spilled hot cream over chocolate. Why this anonymous apprentice isn’t revered in the same way as Einstein or Shakespeare, I do not know.

Chocolate work can be an area of baking that people often give a wide berth. Perhaps this is owing to chocolate’s reputation for bad behaviour; everyone’s had at least one haunting experience with an unreasonably (or so it would seem) split ganache. But today, we’re aiming to patch up relations by deepening our understanding and taking a look at the following. From the history of chocolate, to how to make (and fix) a ganache, to choosing the ‘right’ chocolate and the deal with shelf life, this is a one stop introduction-to-chocolate shop.

Truffles make a lovely starting point for your chocolate-making journey, not least because minimal equipment is needed (though a hand blender will give the best results). There are also many alighting points along the way. These recipes could just as equally be wonderful make-ahead Christmas gifts, as they could become the filling of a mighty chocolate cake. While professional chocolatiers tend to buy premade truffle shells in large quantities to pipe fillings into, we’ll be doing it all by hand. I actually find the hand-rolling truffles quite therapeutic, and I hope you will, too. So with that, let’s get rolling (pun, sorry, unforgivable).

Food Of The Gods

Chocolate’s history is as rich and complex as its flavour and its chemical composition. It is a flavour that cannot be synthesised, nor is another food remotely like it. It’s no wonder its Latin name, Theobroma Cacao, translates as Food of the Gods. For thousands of years, chocolate existed as an unsweetened water-based drink, and the word cacao itself is derived from the Nahuatl (Aztec) word xocolatl, which means ‘bitter water’. But chocolate’s first traces date way back beyond the Aztecs or Maya, to the ancient civilization of the Olmecs (1400-400 BC).

Chocolate as we know it today, and in its truest form, is a blend of cocoa mass, cocoa butter and sugar, and sometimes an emulsifier such as soy lecithin. Incredibly, it is still made, albeit now with more sophisticated means, by the same method as it was many centuries ago: by fermenting, drying and roasting cocoa beans. The beans are then winnowed (the inedible husk of the bean is removed) and we are left with the cocoa nibs, which are ground down to produce a cocoa paste or “liquor”. Around 43-48% of a cocoa nib is fat, and by mechanical process, the paste can be separated into cocoa fat (butter) and the remaining pure cocoa mass.

Cocoa Mass is principally what gives chocolate its flavour.

Cocoa Butter adds smoothness, keeping our cacao mass and sugar happily bound together. Crucially, it also has a melting point of just below human body temperature- leading to the unique way chocolate melts in your mouth. Cocoa butter is the specific element within chocolate that needs to be tempered.

Cocoa Solids is the total combination of cocoa mass and butter. This is what is being referenced when chocolate is given a percentage. E.g. 75% dark chocolate- meaning that per 100g of chocolate, 75g is made up purely of cocoa beans and the remaining 25g will be made of other ingredients, mainly this should be sugar. 

With the exception of milk powder added to create milk chocolate, it should largely contain no more ingredients than the above, but not all chocolate is created equal…

Choosing Chocolate

Since chocolate is taking centre stage here, the quality of the chocolate you use matters beyond the flavour. Take a look at the ingredients list of your favourite corner shop chocolate bar, or supermarket baking chocolate, and you’ll likely notice a multitude of oils and additives, and very little…well, chocolate. Some of the most popular big brands of chocolate I looked at had as little as 20% cocoa solids in them- meaning 80% of your chocolate bar is just STUFF. 

The success of a ganache relies on the harmonious blending and balancing of liquid and chocolate, so once too many other unwelcome ingredients gatecrash the party, you’ll likely get poor/unpredictable results, such as split or grainy ganache, and the flavour will be pretty insipid. For the best results, you want to use chocolate with no more ingredients than those listed above, and try to avoid the ones whose first ingredient is sugar.

The best quality chocolate is known as couverture chocolate. Technically speaking, it is defined as couverture chocolate if it has 32–39% cocoa butter content, which is crucial for tempering (more on this later), as cocoa butter is the element inside chocolate that is being tempered. 

Excitingly, the supermarkets are beginning to catch on. Waitrose No.1, and Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference ranges now include some good quality single origin bars, but there are many wonderful independent producers to explore, and the spectrum of flavours and origins is at least as exciting (I say more) as that commonly associated with wine. Take this as all the justification you need to go forth, taste, explore, and find the varieties you love. Obviously, it is important that you go with whatever your budget allows, but brands such as Valrhona, Original Beans, Pump Street, Casa Luker and Rio Nuevo all produce exceptional chocolate at various prices, whilst also making important strides towards sustainability and traceability.

Percentages 

So what do percentages actually mean on chocolate? With a few exceptions, these are the general parameters:

• Dark chocolate: 50% and above 

• Milk chocolate: 33 - 50% 

• White: 28- 35% 

An honourable mention to my favourite unofficial category of chocolate: once milk chocolate reaches 45% and over, I like to call it Dark Milk Chocolate. It gives you the best of both worlds- you get the creaminess of milk chocolate but with a more distinct, deep flavour. For this reason, I’ve included a recipe for a Dark Milk Truffle, it’s one of the recipes that’s been with me the longest and I hope it brings you all the joy that it does to me.

Making a Ganache

A ganache is the homogeneous blend of two ingredients that don’t usually mix, also known as an emulsion - in this case, the two disagreeing parties are cocoa fat and water.

The basic method when creating a ganache largely remains the same: 

1. Melt the chocolate: Chocolate is chopped into fine pieces. A lot of couverture chocolate comes in small callets/pistols/feves too which are handy to work with. Gently melt it either over a bain marie or in the microwave- never melt chocolate directly in a pan as it’ll burn easily. If you’re melting in the microwave, start in 30 second bursts on 600 and move down to 10 second bursts as you get closer to it being fully melted. You can of course make ganache without pre-melting the chocolate, but this acts as a safety net making sure there are no unmelted bits left in your ganache, and also keeping the chocolate warmer prevents separation from agitating a ganache that’s too cool.

2. Warm the liquid: Warm your liquid element to steaming point, dissolving your sugar (if using) in the liquid at this point. You don’t want to take your liquid element to boiling point as this could scald the chocolate and there is no fixing burnt chocolate. For this reason it is best to warm your liquid element separately and not with the chocolate.

3. Emulsify: Pour your warm liquid over your chocolate and emulsify. Ideally, you want to use a hand blender for best results as this will take your emulsion to the next level. Importantly, the recipes I’ve provided here are all on the richer end of the spectrum to leave you with a ganache firm enough to roll, so they benefit from the power of a hand blender to get the most homogeneous emulsion. Give it a really long blend, 2-3 minutes, to break down the fat particles and you will have the shiniest, silkiest ganache, it’s also just very satisfying/hypnotic to stare at.

4. We want to keep the mix thick and airless for optimum mouthfeel and shelf life (mould loves oxygen), so try and sneak your hand blender into the ganache without trapping any air underneath. You can tilt your bowl/jug to the side to help with this. Alternatively, you can emulsify with a whisk if you don’t have a hand blender. Starting in the middle, gently whisk the ganache, working your way outwards once the centre has started to come together, and you’re left with a smooth glossy ganache. No need to vigorously beat the ganache here as we are not aiming to aerate the mixture.

By following the above, the cocoa fat particles are dispersed into minute droplets and suspended in the water, leaving you with a luscious ganache. 

Fixing a Ganache

To achieve a good emulsion, there needs to be sufficient water content in the ganache for the cocoa fat particles to be distributed evenly. If there isn’t enough water, the fat particles will start to clump back together. Depending on how unbalanced the recipe is, this could present as layers of oily ganache slipping and sliding around each other, or it could be the total separation of the mixture into a single fat layer and the cocoa mass/sugar/water underneath. If this happens, all is not lost.

Here’s a little two step method to follow to bring your ganache back to life. 

1. Sometimes there’s nothing wrong with your ganache other than it’s just got a little cold, especially if it’s dark chocolate. How precious. Put it over a bain marie, gently warm it, and stir to bring it back together. If this doesn’t work, proceed to step two.

2. 9 times out of 10, especially when it comes to formulating your own recipes, it comes down to the imbalance between water and fat. A common misconception is to remedy this with warm cream, but given cream contains fat, this is a less effective way of fixing your ganache. I’d instead warm some water up to steaming point and add a little at a time, mixing between additions till it all comes back together. As our aim for truffles is to keep our ganache on the thicker end of the spectrum, add water in small stages, a tablespoon at a time, so you don’t end up with something too fluid to roll. 

If you end up with something too fluid, not all is lost, you can warm it back up and add in some more melted chocolate. 

Ratios

The most common example of a ganache is a classic “baker’s ganache”: a 1:1 dark chocolate to double cream mixture and this is a good place to start as it’ll give you a reasonably thick ganache. This could be a starting point for a truffle, a ganache for filling a cake, or perhaps even pockets of ganache baked into a brownie for something wonderfully naughty. Let’s take a closer look at that ratio:

Basic Ganache maths

• 100g double cream

• 100g 75% dark chocolate

Breakdown of ingredients

• Chocolate: 45g cocoa fat, 30g cocoa mass, 25g sugar

• Cream: 55g water, 45g butter fat

• Total: 45% fat, 27.5% water, 15% cocoa mass, 12.5% sugar

It is important to note that double cream, especially British double cream, is already very high in fat content, so for all the fat particles to be suspended properly we need to add a good amount of liquid. Quite often, I like to use whipping cream instead (around 35%-40%) , as the lower fat content of whipping cream gives me space in the formula to add some butter for extra silky mouthfeel- this is one of the best things I learnt about whilst working for William Curley. 

By contrast, if you use water as your liquid element, you are not adding any more fat to the ganache, so you can reduce the quantity of liquid to about 0.4:1 water to chocolate to get a similarly thick ganache. However, while double cream and water are two ends of the spectrum, there is so much else you can try… 

Liquids

Cream is the classic partner to chocolate in a truffle, giving us a glossy, smooth texture. It imparts its own natural sweetness, and rich flavour from the butterfat. A water ganache gives you the truest, most explosively chocolate-forward flavour - LOVE water ganache. LOVE. Without the dairy’s own flavour getting in the way, the flavour of a chocolate really unfurls. It's a wonderful way to celebrate a single origin chocolate.

However, you can use many other liquids to introduce different flavour profiles to your ganache. Try fruit juice or puree, your favourite tea, coffee, beer, wine (mulled or otherwise), or even champagne if you’re feeling fancy! Just remember that with a fatless liquid, you will need less of it to make a comparably thick ganache

I’ll also share one of chocolatier’s favourite tricks with you: using salted caramel. (recipe on KP+)

The deal with shelf life

Taking a peek into a professional chocolatier’s store cupboard, you’ll see a selection of ingredients that go beyond the usual suspects. The main reasons we invite these less familiar characters, like invert sugars, into our kitchen when it comes to making chocolate are two things: 1) preventing recrystallisation, aka keeping things smooth, and 2) reducing water activity (A BIG DEAL, explained expertly by Nicola here) in ganache. Being in control of these two things results in a longer shelf life and smoother texture. 

When you make chocolates professionally, the ganache needs to have sufficiently long shelf life. The desired shelf life can vary greatly but some chocolatiers work towards as long as 6 month longevity on their ganaches. The big trade off is that (as a general rule) the longer the shelf life, the sweeter generally the ganache will become. Things like pralines, giandujas and caramels naturally have much longer shelf lives, but that’s a tale for another time. 

Lasting power of home made truffles

To make your own truffles at home, you needn’t source any of these ‘professional’ ingredients, nor up the sugar in pursuit of a few extra days’ shelf life. Of course, you are always free to up/down the sugar quantity to suit your taste, as long as you are aware that the more sugar you add to a ganache, the shelf life extends but the softer it becomes.

With the view of some festive make-ahead gifting, I’m also sharing a few recipes with a slightly longer shelf life, using two of my favourite all-natural preservatives: salted caramel and BOOZE (recipes on KP+). Alcohol, sugar and salt are all substances that chemically bind with water to create what is known as “bound” water instead of “free” water. 

By “binding” the water, it is no longer available for other purposes, such as the growth of mould or bacteria. Caramelised sugar goes a step further than regular sugar in trapping water, and is a chocolatier’s trick for creating a shelf stable ganache without any extra fancy sugars.

Setting Ganache 

A final note on chocolate and water. One key difference between making chocolates professionally vs at home, I never set them in the fridge. This draws more moisture into the mixture, shortening the shelf life. However, for the ease of rolling these at home, I have suggested setting in the fridge to keep the ganache firm and manageable.

Inclusions, Infusions, Pairing

While I wouldn’t necessarily call chocolate a blank canvas, it is a wonderful medium for creativity. Before you set about developing your truffles, I’d first consider which canvas you want to use for your intended flavour, i.e. dark, milk or white. For instance, dark chocolate will hold itself well against bold flavours such as ginger, cardamom or yuzu, but more delicate flavours such as pistachio, tea or champagne may get lost.

As an example, I’ve used a balance of milk and dark chocolate in my Black Forest recipe to allow the flavour of the cherries to cut through, whilst keeping a deep and dark flavour. In the Salted Caramel Truffles, I’ve opted for a robust dark chocolate to compensate for the caramel’s sweetness.

The salted caramel on the left, and a Black Forest adjacent filling made for a previous pop-up.on KP+

Two main ways of customising a ganache are infusions and inclusions. The Black Forest (available on KP+) is an example of an inclusion, adding flavour and texture to ganache. You could try adding things such as confit orange peel for a chocolate orange truffle, perhaps even mincemeat (THE CHRISTMAS KIND, PLEASE) or nut paste. Or perhaps rose or orange blossom water. I wouldn’t advise adding any fresh fruit as the very high water content will cause the ganache to spoil within a day or two- instead you could try substituting cream with a pre-made fruit puree, which will likely have been pasteurised, making it more shelf stable. 

So what about Infusions? As fat is the main carrier of flavour, cream-based ganache is more effective for infusing than a water based one. You really can try out whatever you like here, but some ideas to get you going: loose leaf tea, coffee beans, fresh or dried herbs and spices - I’ve added the option of infusing vanilla into the caramel ganache which would create a vanilla caramel truffle, but you could also try a dollop of miso paste for a miso caramel truffle.

Finishing truffles: Cocoa vs Tempering

A truffle simply rolled in cocoa powder is a classic, finished truffle. But personally, my favourite finish is just a truffle coated in tempered chocolate, I love the natural ebbs and flows of rolled chocolate and each one is like its own little landscape.

Tempering is the process of manipulating the temperature of the chocolate to properly structure its (not very catchily named) Beta-5 crystals. When chocolate is correctly tempered, it sets and contracts within the space of a couple of minutes as opposed to an hour or so. This leads to chocolate having that lovely shine, signature snap and smooth, even melt. 

Some finished truffles

Chocolate often gets a bad rap for being unpredictable, or temperamental, but it’s not. It’s just high maintenance. Like any worthwhile diva, it just has a few set conditions that need to be met otherwise it will not perform. The main two factors being temperature and humidity. If you want to have a go at tempering, make sure you have a digital thermometer to hand as that’s about to become your best friend. Don’t temper chocolate or leave it to set in a humid environment as this will lead to the chocolate blooming, which is when the chocolate draws in moisture and sets with a chalky white finish. An ideal room temperature is about 21-22 degrees but as long as your kitchen isn’t either freezing or a furnace, you should be ok.

Coating a truffle in tempered chocolate does a number of things. Firstly, it adds another dimension of flavour. Secondly, you get the satisfaction of cracking through the tempered chocolate shell to reach the soft filling. It also prevents the ganache from drying out and starves the ganache of oxygen, increasing the shelf life. 

For those of you who want to try coating your truffles in tempered chocolate, check out KP+.

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Notes on the recipes

• As a rule of thumb the higher % a chocolate is, the firmer and less sweet your ganache will become. But even two chocolates with identical percentages from but from different brands can have different fluidities as they can contain differing levels of mass/cocoa fat within the overall percentage of solids, so these recipes can all set slightly differently.

• The recipes below yield approximately 50 truffles. This may seem like a lot, but we need at least this volume of ganache to be able to emulsify with a hand blender effectively. By all means, you can half these recipes but I’d stick to whisking them by hand if you do. If you feel that your ganache isn’t coming together, add a tablespoon of water and continue whisking for a minute to bring it together. If it still hasn’t come together, repeat this process but bear in mind that the more water added the softer the set.

• For finishing, should you feel inclined to add a little jazz, lustre dusts are widely available online in a variety of colours - you can use a small paint brush to dust these onto set chocolate. Another decoration option is fine shavings of chocolate, very finely chopped nuts, sesame seeds, or desiccated coconut. You could either roll your uncoated truffles in these or, if coating, tumble them in your choice of décor immediately after applying their final layer of chocolate, leaving them to set fully before removing them.

• If you want to give your truffles as gifts in a box, or if you just want to present them nicely, petit four cases make a super nostalgic finish, leaving the cockles of your heart thoroughly warmed. 

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Recipe: Dark Milk Truffles

(makes approx. 50 truffles)

I love working with high percentage milk chocolate, as you’ll get a much stronger, deeper flavour. I’ve used a 45% milk chocolate for these- but go with whatever is the darkest you can find. Waitrose does a tangy 49% Dominican Republic milk chocolate, but Pump Street has gone several steps further and has a 58% Madgagascan milk chocolate which is just impossibly good. There’s no added sugar in this recipe as I find it to be sweet enough on its own, but this means they have a short shelf life.

Ingredients

• 400g 45% or higher milk chocolate

• 195g whipping cream (or 145g double cream and 50g water)

• 40g slightly salted butter, cubed, room temperature

Method

1. Weigh your chocolate into a heatproof bowl or jug. Melt the chocolate and set aside.

2. Weigh your cream into a small saucepan and bring to steaming point over a low to medium heat.

3. Pour this over your chocolate and emulsify with a hand blender for 2-3 minutes, being careful not to incorporate air bubbles. Alternatively, use a whisk, start gently whisking in the centre and move outwards as the mix starts to come together. 

4. Add in the cubed butter and stir it in gently till fully emulsified. 

5. Leave it to cool to room temperature, cover, and then transfer to the fridge to set overnight or for at least 8 hours.

Shelf life

Uncoated: 1 week in an airtight container in the fridge
Coated shelf life: 3-4 days at room temperature.

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Rolling

Whatever truffle you’ve decided to make, the finishing touches remain the same. Even if you are planning to coat in chocolate, you must first roll in cocoa powder.

Ingredients: Good quality cocoa powder 

Utensils: A teaspoon, greaseproof paper, two large baking trays, food handling gloves (optional, but I’d strongly recommend, especially if you’re coating them in chocolate!), scales, a small bowl. Please note: it is the nature of this stage that your hands are about to get a little messy! 

Method

1. Line your baking trays with greaseproof paper, remove your ganache from the fridge. 

2. Scoop out roughly 10g of ganache per truffle. You could weigh a couple to get an idea and then eyeball the rest. Place each spoonful onto greaseproof paper.

3. Rolling time. If you have food handling gloves, pop them on. Either way, pour some cocoa powder into a small bowl, dust your fingers liberally in the cocoa powder and roll each spoonful of ganache into a little ball. Try to use the flats of your fingers for this rather than the palm of your hand as this tends to leave you with flying saucer shapes instead of precious little spheres. If your ganache is a little soft, give it an extra coat of cocoa powder. If it’s warming up too much, give it a rest in the fridge till it’s firmed up a bit.

If you’re coating them in tempered chocolate (guide here), put them back in the fridge whilst you get tempering. If not coating, store them in an airtight container. They’ll keep for longer in the fridge but are best enjoyed at room temperature.

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For Octavia’s guide on how finish your truffles with tempered chocolate as well as the recipes for Black Forest Truffles and the Salted Caramel truffles, click here. You can follow Octavia on Instagram here.