Truffle Experiment

I've always been interested in the process of making chocolate treats.  Until now, I've never had the nice big kitchen to try it in.  Now that I do, I decided to try one of Ree Drummond's recipes over at The Pioneer Woman for easy truffles.  Check out her recipe Chocolate Truffles with Sea Salt.  You won't be sorry.  And you'll be in heaven if you actually make these sinful delights!  The best part is, they're so easy to make!

Thank you Ree!  Thank you!

 If you check out her recipe you'll see you need a pound of chocolate.  Like she said, the combination of semi-sweet and bittersweet is, well, awesome.  She said it makes a great deep chocolate flavor without going too far with the dark chocolate flavor.  I agree, it was scrumptiously rich.

Dump in the sweetened condensed milk and heat it all over boiling water.  I am thankful for her suggestion, I won't be buying a double boiler, this worked out just perfectly!  But what I do want to do is get a nice set of Pyrex glass mixing bowls someday soon.

Get it all nice and melty...

And just like she said, it was about the same consistency as marshmallows!  Adding the vanilla added a beautiful gloss to the mixture!  Very difficult not to take some samplings, but I did....don't hate me.  But at least I shared some samplings with my eager boys!

We had a lot of fun! 

Thankfully Ree mentioned she refrigerated the mixture over night.  I needed to know that, since I was drafted by my husband to help load up and relocate equipment for an upcoming job.

So, today I shaped the truffle guts (forgive the goofiness, I live with boys...and we call honey "bee-barf"... just so you know) into balls.  I let it warm up close to room temperature until it was the consistency of firm clay.

This is how easy it is to shape them.

Then I popped them into the freezer to stiffen up and guarantee they wouldn't melt while rolling them in the milk chocolate.  Probably not a necessary step, but I wanted to assure myself as best I could, of some success.

Notice this is only one package of 3oz. milk chocolate....  If you note the recipe, unlike me, you really need 8oz. of this decadence.

Yep, very lacking in the milk chocolate department....

Now here's the surprise, for me at least.  I've never had salt on sweets.  My brother-in-law apparently loves salt on things like watermelon and strawberries.  So I thought, hey, he can't be totally nuts (yes, he can, but that's beside the point...never mind we're both Aquarians, and so is my husband, oh and my nephew... my poor dear sister...).  And since this is chocolate we're talking about, I gotta see what all the fuss is about.

Roll the truffle in the milk chocolate then sprinkle a bit of sea salt as soon as you place it on the wax paper.

Isn't this sad?  Only 15 truffles were coated.  That's how far the 3 ounces went.  The rest will have to await their fate, either go into the freezer until more milk chocolate can be acquired, or eaten with abandon.  I have a strong suspicion the later will be true.

Despite my not reading the recipe carefully enough to note the amount of milk chocolate needed, the experiment was obviously a success!

These are so easy to make, the recipe flexible enough to make on separate days that there is no reason for anyone not to try this out!  Unless you don't like chocolate!  Even though I waited for a large kitchen to do this, I didn't need to.

And here's to you Rick, you're not so weird after all (wink, wink), salt is very good on chocolate!  So you must be on to something with your salt and fruit!  Love you bro!

Thanks Ree!  I'll be back for more recipes, you can count on it!