- Today we are making brandied chocolate truffles.
Four different ways.
All of them are delicious.
And there is so much chocolate
and alcohol in this.
You will literally say, Thank you John!
I love this recipe!
Making this again.
Let's get started!
To make this recipe I am using
12 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips.
Now if you wanted to go extra fancy
find a beautiful dark chocolate that you love.
Just chop it off roughly and put it in that bowl.
Same deal but this would be even more indulgent.
But also even more expensive.
So trade offs.
Okay.
Into the bowl.
And now three tablespoons of unsalted butter.
You can use salted butter if you want to
I'll actually be adding in some salt
just to taste for this recipe.
This is now gonna go over a double boiler
or a Bain-Marie.
So you wanna have gently simmering water
that's not anywhere near this bowl.
It's steaming,
steaming the bowl gently to melt the chocolate.
You don't want to heat it too much
cause the chocolate will seize and become crunchy and
it's not nearly as nice.
Okay, here we go.
(lid clanking sound)
Notice the water is gently simmering.
It's not at a full boil.
Place the bowl over.
And you can break the butter off if you want to.
This will begin melting in no time.
So just keep an eye on it.
You could technically
walk away but
you know,
just be with the chocolate and the butter.
Mix it around a little bit.
Or just walk away and come back.
It'll be fine.
While our chocolate is melting,
I'm gonna chop some pecans up.
So just give them a nice chop.
We're gonna have a little pieces
that we'll roll our truffles or bon-bon's in.
These are gonna be delicious.
Of the three flavors,
we're doing
coco powder,
toasted coconuts
and then toasted pecans.
I thought coconut was gonna be my favorite
cause I love coconut in everything.
But it was the pecans.
I was shocked!
(chopping)
Well, mildly surprised.
How bout that?
Finely chopping those nuts.
It's not a rough chop.
It's a fine chop.
Huh!
All we've to do is dump this out
on to a baking tray.
(transferring on the tray)
Spread it out.
And bake for like five minutes 350
then,
just move it around.
Not with your fingers
because the outside's gonna toast first.
So we want even nice beautiful toast
and keep an eye on it.
You don't want it to blacken.
They'll get bitter.
Alright, back to our chocolate.
It's melting up.
It looks a little crunky right now
cause the butter is in pools
but we can whisk it together,
it'll be beautiful.
It's almost there.
I'm also gonna toast some coconut flakes.
You can use sweetened if you want,
you can use unsweetened too.
I feel like the sweetened is a better choice.
Spread it out.
You don't need that much.
Same deal.
You wanna mix it up half way through
because the outside is definitely
gonna brown first.
So,
take it up,
into there.
My chocolate is pretty melt-y.
I am taking it off the heat
so we can go over this face to face.
And we're gonna pour in
about a quarter cup of cream.
You can use a little bit less.
This is a quarter cup.
I'm gonna use a little bit less.
Take a reserved teaspoon.
So, give that a whisk.
We can put it back over the heat if you want right now.
But the chocolate is pretty warm
and it's going to be really weird looking.
(laughs)
And then beautiful and silky in a moment.
So see, look at that.
It's coming together.
So right now, we basically have a chocolate ganache
and that's delicious
but,
it's a holiday
so what can you do?
Well, you can take a quarter cup of brandy
and put that in there.
That's delicious.
You can add some Cointreau or Grand Marnier,
those are nice orange liqueurs.
You could use some Amaretto.
You could also add in toasted nuts
into here directly.
Toasted coconut into here.
You could add a little chopped
bits of candied cherries.
Okay, look.
The first of all.
Whoa.
This is like
my kind of soup over here.
Ah, this is nice beautiful and silky right now.
Pure decadence.
And I actually want to add in just a little bit of contrast
so we're gonna add some flaked sea salt in.
I'm taking a nice generous pinch of salt.
And you know that can be anywhere
from a quarter teaspoon to like half a teaspoon.
Take a look at this stuff
it's called Maldon sea salt.
This is not an ad
but this stuff
if you're ever wondering like what do all
those Instagrammer's use to like you know,
make their stuff look nice and sexy.
Look at this salt,
this is like,
what?
This is a giant piece of salt,
totally gonna get wasted
since it'll all melt in the chocolate
but I wanted to share it with you.
So lets toss it in there.
Now,
give it a mix.
You could add some more brandy in here by the way
and I feel like that was a stingy quarter cup so,
a little extra blessing over there.
So mix it up.
This has like the most insane inconsistency
let's see, like I'll show it to you.
Do you see that drizzle?
And you can just smell the alcohol
coming out from that.
Which is how a brandied truffle should be.
I'll also clean the edge up.
This is for me for snacking.
This is in the chill in the fridge
for at least two hours.
You need it to firm up completely.
You can make this a day ahead.
Just leave it in the fridge.
Cover it up.
And you'll be golden, okay.
This is gonna get messy.
I'm just warning you.
You can wear gloves for the next step.
I'll be right back.
We have some nice golden-ed coconut here.
Delicious!
I will not be snacking on it.
It needs to come to room temperature.
We also have our delicious toasted pecans.
Also needs to be in room temperature.
So, set it aside.
You could transfer it to a bowl
and pop it into the fridge too if you like.
One minute later
but with a swap out from the night before.
I have my chilled batch of you know,
chocolate truffle mixture.
What am I gonna do with it?
Well,
scoop it out.
You can use an ice cream scoop
with this little release.
You want the small one.
Or you try using a tablespoon
or a teaspoon too.
The size is totally up to you.
I think, this should be just a bit smaller
than this in diameter.
And you'll roll it up
and it'll be a little bit tinier.
Perfect one or two bites.
Oh! This chocolate mixture is everything.
All right, here is our little tablespoon
or two teaspoons.
This is where it gets messy,
so I'm gonna do one and I'll do some magical
cut to's.
Here we go.
One ball on to here.
Basically you're gonna roll these up
and it's gonna go into the fridge
to chill again.
Because you want them to firm up
and be you know,
non melt-y when you handle them.
Trust me.
Number two.
(scoops and presses release)
There we go.
So elegant.
Should be an athlete.
Okay.
I'm basically gonna scoop out
as much as I can,
then roll it altogether
and pop it all in the fridge.
That way I don't have to wash
my hands every five seconds.
If you all have raspberries,
you could also buy some dehydrated raspberries.
They sell them at Trader Joe's among other places.
Then pop those into your blender
with a little bit of confectioner sugar.
Make it into a beautiful like,
deep pink soft red powder.
Roll the truffles out in that.
(happy music)
Okay.
That was easy.
You could also weigh these out on a scale.
You'll have exactly uniform truffles
but you know,
I don't know if you wanna do that.
I don't, not today.
They begin melting immediately
and like I have cold deathly ice hands.
So you might have to work really carefully
or chill them.
Put them in the freezer.
But they can melt, it's gonna be fine.
And no one says they have to look like perfect spheres.
So work quick.
These look like chocolate pebbles.
Just not what I was going for.
So my advice to you,
if you want yours to look a little bit more perfect
but you are rolling them by hand is to
give them a rough out right now.
Like I'm doing.
Pop them into the fridge or freezer.
And then do a second pass.
So like that second pass will really smooth them out
but when you roll things in your coco powder
or your nuts,
then it will also kind of like
smooth things out of it too.
So you won't notice.
If I haven't mentioned this earlier,
you could've used gloves
but to be honest
I don't know why I like the idea of rolling gloves
just made me..cursed me out
I couldn't handle it.
I'll hold it by hand.
I'll wash my hands.
It'll be okay.
You see my clean hands.
I'm going to be transferring
these little guys into the fridge,
just let them firm up for a minute.
We'll come back.
In the meantime I wanna have a little taste test
because this is like really delicious.
(tasting)
So good.
That brandy..
loving you is wrong,
I don't wanna be right,
is so good.
And you are getting a lot of alcohol in there
cause none of it burnt off.
So,
not for kids.
You make a virgin one for the kids
with just cream, chocolate.
You can add some nuts in to make it more interesting.
But you can totally just,
you know,
pour in the alcohol for the one that you're eating.
Cause it's delicious.
It's basically getting icing
like let's roll icing into a ball
and call it a truffle.
Perfect! So classy.
My truffles cooled down
just enough so that I can handle
them now without getting
your crazy looking fingers
and we're gonna dip them in our various coatings.
I am so excited.
And we're done.
That's it.
It's such an easy recipe.
Alright so first of let's do
our toasted coconut
just roll it in there.
It'll pick up that coconut right away
but you could press it down too.
Yeah I am never now
the toasted coconut
is like the least adherent one.
One down, Looks pretty nice.
Now, let's do my favorite,
the toasted pecans.
So just roll it around in there.
It'll pick up those pecan pieces.
But you can press them in
and sprinkle them over too.
The more pecans, the better.
This is like, this is so good.
If you're like John.
I only have time to make one coating.
Toasted pecans.
There we go.
You could also just give this a minute.
Like let it come back to room temperature
a bit, just a little bit
so it'll be stickier on the outside
and everything will coat it more easily.
My tip to you.
Okay, next we have our coco.
Covered in chocolate, that's surprising.
So for the coco powder
that'll really stick on very easily.
Just give it a little roll,
gingerly take it out.
Transferring all these
to like a little baking tray
just like, I can pop them back into the fridge
before I photograph them.
So like I said earlier you could just
kind of manipulate these a bit
and round them off
once you have them all covered
in that some things that aren't sticky.
So much easier.
And if you see any blank spots and you care
you could just stick in a few nuts
or coconut flakes or whatever you're using.
Okay, transfer over.
And we're almost done.
The pecans and the toasted coconut
look pretty similar but I want them to be
like nice,
you know, have some variety
even though they all almost taste the same.
So, I'm gonna try this in,
just a little bit of powdered sugar
and see if that works.
It'll either be wonderful or disappointing.
Roll that around.
Pretty good.
It's a snowball.
We're all done.
I am so excited.
This is gonna be delicious.
But, I'll take a bite
with the pecans for you.
This is my favorite
although the other ones are pretty good too.
Should you always add brandy to chocolate?
Yes! A thousand times yes.
So good!
Oh my gosh!
None of it evaporated.
It's all in there.
The chocolate's nice and soft
and the crunch of the pecans are so toasty.
Nice-d up the flavor.
And that little bit of salt
made a huge difference.
Right.
Thanks so much for watching.
If you have any comments, questions,
leave'm below and
hit that like button and subscribe.