Truffles Not To Be Trifled With

It’s 80p here folks, back from the dead. For those concerned souls out there, I have been on my winter break from grad school. It’s been a tough last 3 weeks, what with the constant sleeping and eating. So with only 1 final week until it’s time to dust off the notepads and spend another $500 on textbooks, I made good on a promise to Gansie.

You see, Gansie bugs me pretty much once a week to re-make these chocolate truffles that I’ve made a couple of times. And by bug, I mean hound, demand, and order. Being the lazy person that I am, I managed to delay the threequel as long as possible. But as all good procrastinating must come to an end, I promised to make them during my winter break.

Truth be told, and in typical 80p fashion, I just followed a recipe. My limit in kitchen creativity stops at suggesting to add more salt. But this is a damn good recipe that makes a damn good chocolate truffle. You can read it for yourself, but the only step I would change is to chop the chocolate up much more than “coarse”. The cream/hazelnut/butter/bourbon mixture has to melt all the chocolate and big chunks simply don’t work. I spent a half hour today basically mincing the surprisingly hard to cut chocolate.

And people, when you make these, and you really should, don’t be a wimp and skip out on the bourbon. It adds a great kick to make the taste more than just chocolate. Also, don’t be chintz and put Jim Beam or Evan Williams in there, use a little of the good stuff in the back of your liquor cabinet. I went with one of my favorites, Blanton’s.

So this is a pretty labor intensive project, but the rewards are worth it. Don’t believe me? Just wait until Gansie comments after this post.