Real talk: Chocolate for Valentine's Day—or any other day, for that matter—is totally overrated. Unless. Unless it's really good chocolate. We're talking quality ingredients and superb, melt-in-your-mouth texture. There are a few brands and chocolatiers who've captured our hearts, but if you're looking to get a little more D.I.Y. and make your own chocolate confections, there are a few things you need to know. Here's what most people screw up when making their truffles.
Truffles only sound fancy—they're a simple confection. With so few ingredient—at their very most basic, just chocolate and cream. This is all the more reason to invest in the good chocolate, the good cream, the good vanilla, and so forth. Though high price tags don't necessarily translate to quality chocolate, do your homework and find a brand you like—here are some of ours. A definite don't: chocolate chips. They contain stabilizers to help them keep their shape when heated, which means a ganache that's granular and gritty (ganache is the basis for truffles).
You'll be melting the chocolate by stirring it with heated cream. Avoid cream that's too hot, advises Claire Saffitz, BA's senior associate food editor. Boiling cream will cause the cocoa butter to separate out from the chocolate, making it look and feel greasy and congealed, rather than smooth and silky. Bring cream to a simmer then let it sit for a few minutes before slowly pouring it over the chopped chocolate in a bowl. Use a heat-proof spatula to stir from the center outwards.
Cognac, vanilla bean, almond extract, chile powder… these are all great additions to your truffles. But add too much or too many different flavors, and you'll miss the entire point. (The point is the chocolate!) Also, says out senior food editor Andy Baraghani, adding too much of a liquid will make the truffles challenging to roll; they won't hold their shape because they'll be too watery. With alcohols—that includes extracts—you'll want to wait to add them until you take the mixture off the heat.
As with any pastry, baked good, or candy, a little salt is imperative. It helps bring out the sweet flavors—salt makes all ingredients taste more like "themselves." Choose any salt you like—we're partial to flaky sea salt, and we wouldn't be opposed to even adding a tiny pinch to the top of each truffle.
Chocolate has an irritating way of getting everywhere when working with it. Set yourself up for success by making the chilling and rolling process as neat as possible. First, use a shallow dish to chill the ganache—a glass casserole dish, for example. Not only will it set faster, it will be easier to scoop if you don't have to dig deep. Then, have a parchment-lined baking sheet set up for the formed truffles. Saffitz likes to use a melon baller for perfectly-sized portions (not too big and not too small!). She'll scoop out all of the truffles before putting on plastic gloves to roll them into 2-bite balls and decorating. Re-chill them again so they firm up. Be sure to cover them, or they'll adopt the other (less chocolate-friendly) flavors in your fridge.
Store-bought truffles are lacquered in a shiny, hard shell of chocolate. That's the result of tempering, a complicated process involving precision heating and cooling. Save yourself the headache and skip this step, says Saffitz. Instead, roll the formed balls in crushed pretzels or banana chips, raw sugar, sprinkles, whatever your heart desires!
"A good truffle should melt in your mouth," says Saffitz. If you serve them stone-cold and straight outta the fridge, you're missing the point. That said, letting them sit at room temperature for hours will render them so soft that you can't pick them up. A solid hour oughta do the trick.