Tag: food

Velvety Hot Chocolate Fudge

Post author By Megha Jandhyala
Post date August 15, 2012
7 Comments on Velvety Hot Chocolate Fudge

Of all the lovely chocolatey treats in the world, chocolate-themed ice cream is one of my favourites. If you’ve seen my post on the best ice cream in the world you know I am not kidding or exaggerating when I say that I am hooked to chocolate filled, chocolate topped and chocolate sprinkled chocolate ice cream.

Now ordinarily, I eat my ice cream with Sanders Dark Chocolate Fudge, which is an absolutely delicious ice cream-topping that you can get in grocery stores all over Michigan. I haven’t found a decent substitute here in Canada though, and believe me, I’ve looked. So I stock up on Sanders every time I am in Michigan. When I run out, which is always fairly soon after I return to Canada, I settle for whatever generic fudge is available at my local grocery store. This makes me immensely discontent. Really, it gets in the way of me being truly happy here. Also, store-bought fudge is often filled with high fructose corn syrup and tonnes of sugar and preservatives. Given this unfortunate state of affairs, I’ve tried on 3 separate occasions to make a homemade fudge topping, following recipes from different sources each time. Alas, the result was sub-par each time.

But today, as I sat down on my couch to a new episode of “Luther”, I was struck by an idea. You see, the biggest problem with the homemade sauces I made was that none of them were gooey and fudgy enough. Also, there is a warm, velvety feeling that the Sanders fudge fills my mouth with, and I haven’t been able to re-create this texture and taste in all my fudge-making attempts. I’ve been telling myself that my refusal to use high fructose corn syrup lies at the root of my failure. “Or perhaps, it is some other, secret ingredient that I am missing”, I would think to myself morosely, in my dark moments. But the thought that came to me this evening, the question rather, was this: could it be, that the secret ingredient was caramel sauce? (Side note: I have now discovered that this inspiring epiphany was the result not of divine intervention, but a happy co-incidence. You see, I was eating caramel chocolate ice cream on the couch, while watching the tv show).

I was intrigued, I was inspired, I was impatient! I pranced over to the kitchen, and began concocting. What I ended up with wasn’t as good as Sanders chocolate fudge, but it was pretty darned delicious nevertheless. Also, I think that this recipe is slightly healthier, because I used no corn syrup or preservatives, just good wholesome, somewhat fattening ingredients 🙂 If you want to try it, here’s how:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 tbsp water

1 tbsp organic unpasteurized honey

1 tbsp organic grade B maple syrup

1/2 cup heavy cream

4 tbsp good quality, unsalted butter

A few pinches of salt to taste

1 tsp vanilla essence

150 g 80% good quality dark chocolate

Method:

Place the sugar, water, honey and maple syrup in a little saucepan and heat on medium heat. Don’t stir the mixture at all; instead swirl the liquid about in the saucepan once in a while. Use a basting brush dipped in water to brush down the sides of the pan if needed. Wait until the sugar dissolves and then turns a deep amber (the maple syrup will make the mixture a little brown right from the start, so wait until the mixture turns even darker), about 8 minutes.

Next, take the pan off the heat and add cream and butter to the mixture. Whisk the mixture until it is smooth.

Then add the chocolate, salt and vanilla essence. Mix it all up until you have a nice smooth texture.

You can serve it warm, as most people like it, or you can wait until it cools and thickens. I like my sauce thicker and more fudgy, so I wait until it has cooled down before I drown my ice cream in it. Either way, whenever you’re ready, pour this delicious goeeyness on your ice cream and eat away to your heart’s content.

Pour the left-over fudge into a jar and store it in the fridge.

Tags caramel sauce, chocolate, food, fudge, hot chocolate fudge, ice cream, photos, recipe

Baking Cooking Food General Recipes

Refried Beans Remixed Part I

Post author By Megha Jandhyala
Post date July 28, 2012
1 Comment on Refried Beans Remixed Part I

Sometime ago, I wrote about how relatively easy it is to make refried beans. Now that I’ve figured out a recipe for beans that works for me (and by that I mean that it is a wholly vegetarian recipe and it’s super-spicy) I’ve been making refried beans a lot lately. My favourite ways to eat beans include: beans on top of rice, beans inside burritos and quesadillas, and even just beans on more beans with lots of cheese on top 🙂 But now, my new favourite way to eat beans is on a pizza!

One evening, a few months ago, I had this brain wave: mixing Mexican spicy deliciousness with the most delectable and beautiful carb-related food invention in the world, namely, thin-crust pizza. I’ve been eating way too much pizza ever since.

If you want to try it out, here’s what you will need:

1. Pizza dough

2. One serving of re-fried beans, go here for my recipe.

3. One onion, sliced

4. Freshly grated aged cheddar, to taste

5. Chunks of mozzarella, to taste

6. 1-2 tbsp cayenne pepper

7. 1 tsp freshly ground cumin seeds

8. 1 red or yellow bell pepper, chopped coarsely or cut into slivers

9. 1 jalapeño, sliced horizontally

You can make your own dough, and if you have the time, I would recommend doing this. I didn’t make my own this time though. You see, I was really excited about the idea of this fusion pizza, trying to work out the various toppings I’d put on it, and I didn’t want to wait any longer than I had to. So I ran out and got some fresh dough from the deli-section of the supermarket.

I left the dough out on the counter to let it warm to room-temperature and buttered and floured a pizza pan (you should use a pizza stone if you have one). About 30 minutes later, I set the oven temperature to 360 fahrenheit, sprinkled a spoonful of flour on the counter and began working with the dough. After kneading it a bit on the counter I made the dough into a ball, flattened it gently, and kept pulling it apart, all the time moving it around and flipping it over so that it wouldn’t stick to the counter. When I’d pulled it and stretched it into something resembling a circle, I placed the dough on the pan and then slowly and patiently spread it out to the sides of the pan:

Because I wanted a thin crust pizza I made sure to spread the dough as thin as possible. However, I like a slightly thicker crust along the edges, so I made the outer edges thicker.

Next, I sprinkled some sliced onions on this and popped it into the oven for about 12 minutes, until it looked liked this:

That is, it was slightly cooked and the base had risen a bit. You can see little bubbles; I am given to understand that this is a good sign for a pizza base 🙂

Finally, I spread the refried beans on the base with a knife and topped this off with the rest of the sliced onions, bell pepper slivers or pieces, jalapeño slices, and cheddar and mozzarella cheeses.

It’s also fun to play around and make a multi-topping pizza. I did a pizza tonno combined with the refried bean pizza the very next day:

I popped the pizza back into the oven once I was done with the toppings, and let it bake for another 10 minutes, until the cheese had melted and the onions had crisped a bit.

You’re wondering why a (large) third of the pizza is missing aren’t you? It’s because I had to eat some of the pizza as soon as it came out of the oven, while it was still hot! The side-effects of my greed were: burnt fingertips and a picture of an incomplete pizza.

I would advise you to give the pizza a few minutes to cool; it’ll also be easier to cut and serve when it’s isn’t sizzling and just out of the oven.

Don’t wait too long though, it’s best eaten hot. Cut yourself a slice or two, sprinkle some cayenne pepper and cumin powder on top and you’re ready to eat!

I love the spicy, cheesy, softness of the pizza centre melting and folding away, leading up to a freshly baked, thicker, crisp edge..mmmm.

Tags cooking, food, fusion food, mexican pizza, pizza, Recipes

Cooking Food General Recipes

Scrumpalumpous Sunday Morning: Pumpkin-Apple Pancakes topped with my ‘Sugar and Spice Butter’

Post author By Megha Jandhyala
Post date July 22, 2012
No Comments on Scrumpalumpous Sunday Morning: Pumpkin-Apple Pancakes topped with my ‘Sugar and Spice Butter’

I woke up this morning with a hankering for delicious pancakes 🙂 but I didn’t want just plain old pancakes, I wanted to make something interesting. Of course, I could have made nutella pancakes, or ice-cream pancakes, but I wanted to try to make something a little, well healthier.

You see, over the past few days, I’ve been trying to eat more fruit and vegetables. It is however, not an easy thing to do, given that I dislike most veggies and nearly all fruit. Yesterday, I even tried making myself a carrot smoothie, because I hate eating carrots. I chopped up a few skinned carrots and threw them in the food processor with some water. This experiment did not go too well, and I do not recommend trying it at home. I ended up with what can be best described as orange glop, of which I unfortunately took a large gulp. This was, in equal measure, both brave and stupid.

So this morning, I woke up with renewed determination; I was going to eat fruit, and I was going to enjoy it! I decided on pumpkin and apple pancakes topped with maple syrup and a flavoured butter that I call ‘Sugar and Spice Butter’. This I washed down with hazelnut and chocolate tea.

This was a delicious and fairly easy to set-up, sunday brunch. And yes, while it wasn’t really that healthy, it was most definitely a change from my usual chocolate-themed food 🙂

And this did go into the making of this breakfast 🙂

I admit that I did take a shortcut, just this once. I started off with pancake mix. Calm down dear readers, there is a reason, a justification for this otherwise unpardonable sin! First and foremost, I am NOT a morning person! Second, this Trader’s Joe’s mix is absolutely delicious. You really should go and stock up on a whole lot of boxes of this in the fall- it’s a seasonal product you see.

So I followed the instructions on the box, except that I added chopped up apple bits to the batter. For the flavoured butter all you need is:

1/4 cup good quality unsalted butter

2 teaspoons brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg

A few drops vanilla essence

Whip all this up in a bowl and then heat the mixture for about 45 seconds on low heat in the microwave, just enough to melt the sugar. Then whip it all up again and place it in the fridge to cool and harden. And there you have it: flavoured butter for pancakes, crepes or bread!

Oh and I have to fess up, I did finish up my brunch with a little dessert. I moved over to the coffee table, with this:

Another cup of tea and a little cup of home-made hazelnut chocolate butter 😉

Mmmm…I can’t help it, I am a chocolate nut-butter fiend.

Tags breakfast, cinnamon butter, flavored butter, food, nutmeg butter, photos, recipe

Food General Recipes

Strawberry-Banana Yoghurt Smoothie

Post author By Megha Jandhyala
Post date May 22, 2012
10 Comments on Strawberry-Banana Yoghurt Smoothie

If you’ve already read a few of my blog posts, or you’re a friend of mine, you probably know that I am not thrilled by the prospect of eating fruits and vegetables. Usually, I only use fruit and vegetables (with the exception of spinach, tomatoes and butternut squash) on my skin and hair! In fact, if a serial-killer were to abduct me with the express intention of torturing me, his/her best bet would be to force me to eat some fruit, or worse veggies.

But, I am getting old and well, wrinkles and the prospect of some debilitating illness (in that order) are also beginning to cause me some concern. This has prompted me to consider eating some fruit.

I tried at first to eat berries, specifically, strawberries, blueberries and such, but found them to be too sour. So then I began coupling them with slices of cake, specifically, cheesecake, Nutella cake and such. This worked, except, I also got horrendously fat ( not quite horrendously, but I did put on some weight). I found I was eating more cake and less fruit; not only did this make me fat, it sort of defied the purpose of eating fruit, namely to try and be more healthy, if I ended up eating more sugars and fats along with the fruit, in order to be able to consume the fruit.

But finally, I might have a solution! I’ve begun making fruit smoothies every morning and they’re quite refreshing! I’ve been told they’re pretty good by some of my friends who’ve tried them. For me, as you know, all good food has to be spicy and buttery or in the alternative, chocolatey, so while it’s really difficult to even think about raw fruit as yummy, I will say this, this smoothie is quite a bit better than edible, which makes it one of the best fruit smoothies in the world, I assure you.

If you want to try making one, all you need are 6 medium strawberries, a banana, yoghurt, milk, and a food processor or blender. Start by culling the strawberries:

If you don’t know how to do this, watch this video about how to cull strawberries fast:

Next, throw the berries and the banana (cut in half) into a processor or blender and process until smooth. Then add 2-4 tablespoons of yoghurt (depending on how tart you like your smoothie to be) and about 3 tablespoons of milk. Process some more until everything is blended and pour into a tall glass.

Drink immediately, and give yourself a pat on the pat for doing something healthy 🙂

Tags drinks, food, fruit, health, photos, smoothies, stawberry-banana yoghurt smoothie, summer

Food General

How Every Dinner Party Should End

Post author By Megha Jandhyala
Post date May 19, 2012
6 Comments on How Every Dinner Party Should End

Last week, two old friends invited me over to their home for dinner. It was a lovely evening which ended with them bringing out this super pretty cake. On a side-note, the friend who baked this cake is so serious about baking that she is actually taking a cake-decoration class! Don’t you think it’s very intricately decorated?

It looked so ornate and perfect that I almost couldn’t eat it. Almost. Needless to say, I ate more than I should, and brought a whole lot more home with me 😛

I think ALL evenings should end like this, with a beautiful, and perhaps as importantly, large cake, being shared amongst a few good friends 🙂

Tags cake, dessert, food, parties, photos

Adventure Food General Reviews

Culinary Adventure in Toronto Part I (Or How to Eat like a Scheherazade)

Post author By Megha Jandhyala
Post date May 14, 2012
No Comments on Culinary Adventure in Toronto Part I (Or How to Eat like a Scheherazade)

Last week I was to meet an old friend for dinner. He said I could pick the restaurant and because I really wanted to try some place new, I spent hours researching restaurants in Toronto. I wanted to find a great place that served something unusual, something that was relatively new to me.

You see, I’ve been feeling more than a little restless lately; these past few months, I haven’t been traveling as much as I usually. One great way I’ve found to satisfy my wanderlust when I cannot afford to spend time traveling, is to try out a restaurant that serves food from some interesting part of the world. This ‘coping mechanism’ is particularly effective if the restaurant serves cuisine from a part of the world that I haven’t visited yet.

So I googled and yelped away and finally decided on a Persian restaurant called The Pomegranate. It is, oddly enough, situated in Little Italy. I rang the restaurant the next day and managed to get a dinner reservation for the same night.

The restaurant itself was cozy and the decor was somewhat cute. I have to be honest though, it wasn’t anywhere as nice as the review on blogto.com led me to believe. Some of the furnishings and fixtures were bordering on shabby and it wasn’t half as gorgeous or interesting as I expected it to be, given its Persian association. It reminded me a little bit of the scores of Indian restaurants I’ve seen, with kitschy Indian decor; in short it looked like it was trying far too hard to be what it thought westerners wanted it to be.

When the food arrived though, I forgot all about the decor. It was delicious! I should point out in no uncertain terms here, that I have never been to Iran, nor have I ever had ‘persian’ or Iranian food anywhere except in India. Also, I use the term ‘Persian’ to describe the food and the restaurant because this is how the restaurant owners have chosen to describe the place and the food. The term is fraught with political, cultural and historical connotations and tensions, but this post isn’t the place to go into all of this, and I am certainly not informed enough on the issues involved to wax eloquent on it, so I have decided to simply stick with the term that the restaurant owners have chosen.

Getting back to the food, I had the fesenjaan (they had a vegetarian version with mushrooms). It came with a generous serving of rice and salad (of course I didn’t touch the salad 😉 )

Described as a stew of walnuts and pomegranate syrup, the fesenjaan was flavouful and creamy with a detectable but subdued nutty flavour. One of the reviews of the restaurant I came across described this dish as syrupy (and the menu hinted at this by describing it as a stew of pomegranate syrup) and I must admit I almost didn’t order it because of this, but in fact it wasn’t syrupy. It was delicately sweet and in terms of texture and consistency resembled a typical mughlai sauce/gravy (which of course entirely makes sense as mughlai food was deeply influenced by Persian cuisine). So it was more like a sweetened shahi paneer or butter chicken than it was like a syrup.

In conclusion, I recommend the place. It’s cute, the servers are friendly, the food is good and the decor is pleasant and cosy enough- it’s just not breathtaking or as unique as it could be.

Tags food, photos, review, Toronto restaurants, travel Persian food

Chocolate Chocolate Truffles Food General Recipes

A Hand-made, Delicious Gift for your Grown-up Friends

Post author By Megha Jandhyala
Post date April 23, 2012
12 Comments on A Hand-made, Delicious Gift for your Grown-up Friends

This post is also about truffles. I thought I should just make that clear right at the start. If you’re tired of all my truffle-y posts, skip this one; my next one won’t be about truffles, or even chocolate. It’ll probably be about this delicious, spicy Hyderabadi-style fish I made yesterday; or it might be about a nice little Persian restaurant that I visited last week. Either way, it probably won’t be about chocolate.

Although, it just occurred to me that if you’re bored by chocolatey posts, you’re not really my key demographic, are you? (Really, what are you doing here if chocolate doesn’t make you ever-so-slightly unhinged?)

Anyway, this is a post about a great gift-idea: assorted chocolate truffles. This is usually an ideal little present because truffles are delicious (to most people), make people happy (quite literally (read my previous post for more on this)) and they’re very personal (you can custom-make flavours to suit your friends’ tastes). They’re also pretty easy to make, once you’ve gotten the hang of it.

The first step involves choosing flavours. You could choose from so many different kinds! Here are a few:

1. Dark Chocolate truffles (go here for my recipe)

2. Cointreau Dark Chocolate truffles (go here for my recipe)

3. Dark Chocolate Cream Cheese Truffles with Cream Cheese Centers (go here for my recipe)

4. Dark Chocolate Truffles with Orange-Cream Cheese Centers (go here for my recipe)

5. Dark Chocolate Truffles with Strawberry Cream Cheese Centers (go here for my recipe)

6. Dark Chocolate Hazelnut Truffles (recipe in this post)

7. Mint Chocolate Truffles (recipe in this post)

8. Dark Chocolate Truffles with Brazil-nut butter centers (recipe forthcoming)

I could go on and on, but I’ve got my whole life to invent truffle recipes. For now, I am going to stop thinking about truffle flavours and get on with this post.

Here’s what I chose for my first truffle-gift-experiment: Cointreau chocolate, mint chocolate and hazelnut. I chose these flavours because they’re really easy to make, easier than truffles with flavoured centers.

What you will need:

200g dark chocolate (At least 70% cocoa solids)

1 cup heavy/whipping cream

Two pinches of salt

About a teaspoon of mint essence

2 teaspoons Frangelico (or some other hazelnut liqueur)

1 teaspoon Cointreau or Grand Marnier

A handful of hazelnuts

2 tablespoons of cocoa powder

50g chocolate to dip the mint truffles in

3 sheets of parchment paper or foil

3 post-its

Coloured paper cups to place the truffles in

Method:

Chop up the chocolate with a knife and place it in a bowl:

You could also use a food processor. Next, warm up the cream until it just begins to boil and pour it over the chocolate:

Try and make sure that all the chocolate is covered. Let the bowl stand for a few minutes. Add the salt, take a whisk and gently mix the cream and chocolate. Now your ganache is ready.

Bring out two more bowls. Spoon about one-third of the ganache into one of these bowls and another third of the ganache into the other bowl. Now you have three portions of ganache in three separate bowls.

Mix in the mint essence in the first bowl, Frangelico in the second bowl and Cointreau (or Grand Marnier) in the third bowl. I would start by adding a little of each flavour and then adding more to taste. It is especially important to use the mint essence sparingly. For one thing, different brands of mint essence have varying levels of strength. Also, mint as a flavour very easily overpowers chocolate.

Let the ganache(s) cool to room temperature and then, place the bowls in the fridge.

In about an hour, check if the ganache has firmed up. If it has, take all three bowls out of the fridge. Place three sheets of foil or parchment paper on three separate plates. Take three post-its and write the names of the flavours of the truffles down, one flavour for each post-it. Now, stick a post-it underneath each plate. Next, scoop out tablespoon-sized portions of the mint flavoured ganache on the correspondingly labelled plate. Use an ice-cream scoop if you have one.

Repeat this with the other two flavoured ganaches. Place the plates in the fridge.

After about 20 minutes, take the plates out and begin to roll each scoop of ganache into as perfect a sphere as possible. Make sure not to confuse the different flavoured truffles; place all mint truffles on the plate labelled ‘mint’ and the Cointreau ones on the plate labelled ‘Cointreau’ and so on.

Once you’ve rolled all the ganache into balls, place all three plates back in the fridge for about 20 minutes.

Now comes the last step, coating the truffles.

For the hazelnuts truffles, I decided that the most appropriate coating was toasted and crushed hazelnuts. This is a simple enough coating to make. Just pop a handful of hazelnuts in the oven (preheated to 375 farenheit (that’s 180 celsius)) for about 10 minutes, tossing the nuts once during this time. Let them cool and then place them in a tea-towel and rub them against each other until they lose their skins. Then place them in a mortar and pestle and coarsely grind them. I suggested a mortar and pestle rather than a grinder because this way you can make sure you break up all the nuts without reducing most of the nuts to a powder.

photo 3-15 — Coarsely ground toasted hazelnuts

And now for the final touch, just roll each hazelnut truffle about in your hand for a bit to make the outside of the truffle sticky and then roll it in the crushed hazelnuts. Lightly press the nuts in to make sure they stick to the truffle.

For the Cointreau truffles, I decided on a simple coating: cocoa powder. Just take a few tablespoons of cocoa powder in a bowl, warm the outside of each Cointreau truffle by rolling it about in your hand, and then lightly roll it in the bowl of cocoa until it is completely covered.

Lastly, I decided to dip the mint truffles in dark chocolate. This looks and sounds more difficult than it is, and it’s actually a lot of fun 🙂 It is also undoubtedly messy.

Carefully melt 50g dark chocolate (using either a double boiler or a microwave on a very low heat setting). Let the chocolate cool a bit (we don’t want to wait for it to harden, but we don’t want it to be too warm either).

Once the chocolate has cooled somewhat, take a truffle and dip it into the chocolate. Roll it about in the chocolate until it’s completely coated and then fish it out.

Place the truffle back on the foil/butter paper. Repeat this process with all the truffles. Once you’ve dipped all the truffles, take a toothpick and trace a circle around the bottom of each truffle. This is so that we don’t have a lot of excess chocolate stuck awkwardly to the bottom of the truffle once the outside chocolate has hardened.

Place each truffle in a paper cup. Preferably, use paper cups of different colours that compliment the truffle flavours. For instance, I used green for mint, orange for Cointreau and light brown for hazelnut. Let the truffles sit somewhere cool to cool. They should be ready in 20-30 minutes.

Since the idea was to make assorted truffles as a gift, I wanted to pack them in a nice box. I hunted all over my neighborhood for a cute gift box, but couldn’t find anything appropriate. I finally stumbled upon an arts and crafts store, and they were nice enough to cut some beautiful coloured paper for me so that I could make little bags out fo it:

I placed the truffles in these bags once they were ready and sowed on little message cards on the front that not only gave my friend my regards, but also described the different flavours of truffles included in the bag on the back.

Needless to say, my friend won’t mind taking care of my plants again 😉

Tags chocolate, chocolate truffles, DIY, food, Gifts, photos, recipe

Food General Reviews

Macaroons at Dusk

I wouldn’t say that I am tremendously fond of macaroons. I mean I like them, sure, but I’ve never woken up in the middle of the night and wanted one. I have woken up in the middle of the night craving all sorts of other foods. Some of the things I have had midnight cravings for include:

1. Chocolate

2. Chocolate Ice Cream with Fudge on Top

3. Chocolate Fudge

4. Fish Tacos

5. Re-fried Beans

6. Yummy Thin Crust Pizza

7. Fish Curry (and this is an umbrella term I am using to refer to about 6 kinds of fish curry)

I could literally go on for hours, and this is just what I craved over the last week or ten days.

But, I’ve never ever craved a macaroon. My point is, I was never into macaroons, that is until recently. The other day, a friend brought me some assorted macaroons as a gift and since then, I’ve developed a taste for them. It isn’t that I’ve never had them before, it’s that these were particularly delicious macaroons. Unlike chocolate, which I enjoy eating even when it’s of average quality, I only like macaroons if they’re particularly well made, and these were yummy! They were from MoRoCo, a little chocolate-themed store and restaurant in the Yorkville area of Toronto. Go here for their website.

The macaroons were light and airy and I loved all the different flavours they had.

They made the most delightful little snack last evening along with a ginger-white chocolate cookie. You see, I set them on my bedside table late in the afternoon, and my plan was to take a break from working to eat them, when I was done reading this important chapter of an important book for my even more important dissertation.

It turned out to be a rather engaging chapter, and I kept on reading. Evening had turned to dusk before I realized I hadn’t eaten them yet. (This, by the way, is proof of the fact that I am only reasonably fond of macaroons, whereas I am unreasonably obsessed with chocolate. I’ve never left uneaten chocolate by my bedside and forgotten about it. That’s unheard of! If I did that and it became known to my family and/or friends, everyone who loved me would be very worried about me indeed.)

I needed a drink at this point, so I made myself a colourful drink (fresh, pulpy watermelon juice) to go with the snack:

Needless to say, I had a nice, rewarding study break. I did of course also dig into some of those truffles I made yesterday as well 🙂

Tags food, macarons, photograph

Chocolate Chocolate Truffles Food General Recipes

Dark Chocolate Truffles with Gooey Strawberry Cream-Cheese Centers

Post author By Megha Jandhyala
Post date April 17, 2012
9 Comments on Dark Chocolate Truffles with Gooey Strawberry Cream-Cheese Centers

Yesterday, the weather was lovely. Although the sky was cloudy and the sun managed to peek out only once or twice, the air was warm and breezy. In the evening, after a grueling Pilates class, I went out for a little stroll in the neighborhood. As I was walking past a green-grocers, it occurred to me that I ought to be healthy and buy some fruit. “I could make myself a healthy fruit shake”, I thought to myself. Going to yoga or Pilates sometimes does this to me; it inspires me to be uncharacteristically open-minded about eating healthy fruit. (It has yet to have any effect on my general aversion to veggies though; THAT would be a real miracle!)

There were several pretty, colourful and bright fruit in the store, but a little basket of strawberries drew my attention the most, and so I bought it. On the walk home, my mind did what it usually does, it wandered to chocolate. “What about strawberry chocolate truffles?” I thought to myself. “Or wait! What about strawberry cream-cheese centered chocolate truffles” I asked myself. Ooooh that sounded delicious, wonderful, so good in fact, that I set about executing my devious plan right then and there. I rushed over to the yucky supermarket across the street from my apartment and bought some cream-cheese. Three hours later, I ended up with this (I took a bite out of it so I could show you the delicious creamy center:

Dark Chocolate Truffles with Strawberry Cream Cheese Centers

And here I am chronicling my adventure.

Since my last cream-cheese truffles (brown sugar-coated truffles with orange cream centers) came out so well, I decided to follow a similar process for today’s project. I began with a traditional dark chocolate ganache (made with cream) which I used to make the truffles themselves. Next, I incorporated the cream cheese and strawberry flavours I love so much into the recipe by making cream cheese centers for the truffles. This is the one fairly tricky part of the process. Actually shaping the truffles with the cream cheese centers can be messy and it requires patience. Finally, instead of coating the truffles in brown sugar (as I did with my last batch) I dipped the truffles in dark chocolate. They were pretty good, and if you like strawberries, you will like these EVEN more, so give them a try, why don’t you?

Ingredients for the Truffles:

100 g dark chocolate (since the strawberry cream cheese filling was a little sweet, I used chocolate with 85% cocoa solids)

1/2 cup heavy/whipping cream

A pinch of salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence (at room temperature)

50 g chocolate to coat truffles with

A sheet of butter paper or foil

Ingredients for the Cream Cheese Centers:

50 g cream cheese (at room temperature)

3-6 tablespoons of icing sugar

6 medium strawberries

Method:

Chop up the chocolate into small pieces (you could also process it in a food processor) and place it in a bowl. It’s important to chop up the chocolate into little bits so that it melts evenly when you pour the cream over it. It should look like this:

Heat the cream in a pan until it just begins to bubble and then pour it over the chocolate:

Let the mixture stand for a few minutes. Then very gently mix the chocolate and cream:

Add the vanilla and salt and mix until you have a smooth ganache:

Cover the bowl and let the ganache cool to room temperature, then place it in the fridge.

While the ganache is chilling, let’s make the cream cheese filling. The first step is making some strawberry juice. Wash the strawberries thoroughly and then hull them (for instructions on how to do this, go here). This is what they should look like:

Chop up the hulled strawberries and then process them in a food processor or mixer:

Isn’t this a beautiful rich colour?

Strain this pulp to get strawberry juice. We’ll be using this to flavour the cream cheese.

Set the juice aside. Take another bowl, put the cream cheese in it, and whip it up with a mixer, until it’s smooth.

Chocolate Cream Cheese Truffles — Softened cream cheese

Now, add two tablespoons of icing sugar and whip it all up.

Taste the mixture. If you think it needs more sugar add some more. When it tastes right, add strawberry juice to taste, one teaspoon at a time. You should add as much juice as you think tastes good, however, remember that the more juice you add the thinner the filling will become, and the thinner the filling, the more difficult it is to work with when shaping the truffles.

I had to add some more sugar at this stage to thicken it. It tasted good even with the sugar, but it was more than I would ordinarily have added. When the filling tastes just right to you, pour the cream cheese filling into an icing/frosting bag or a sandwich bag and put it in the fridge.

Once the ganache has been in the fridge for about an hour, take it out and see if it’s firmed up. It should be firm but not hard. Take a large plate and cover it with foil or butter paper. Portion out the ganache on the foil or butter paper, with each portion measuring about a tablespoon full.

Place the plate in the fridge. In about an hour, take it out along with the cream cheese filling. Now you’re ready to begin shaping the truffles.

Pick up a scoop of ganache and shape it into a ball. Flatten it on your hand like a mini-tortilla or chapathi. Next, squeeze a bit of cream cheese filling out of the frosting bag (if you were using a sandwich bag cut off one of the bottom tips of the bag) on the center of the ‘chocolate chapathi’:

Fold the chocolate over the cream cheese filling and roll the whole thing carefully into a ball. I don’t have a photograph of this because by this time my hands were covered in chocolate. Repeat this until all the ganache has been used up.

Making chocolate cream cheese truffles — Almost Ready-Truffles!

For the final step, carefully melt 50g dark chocolate (using either a double boiler or a microwave on a very low heat setting). Let the chocolate cool a bit (we don’t want to wait for it to harden, but we don’t want it to be too warm either).

Once the chocolate has cooled somewhat, take a truffle and dip it into the chocolate. Roll it about in the chocolate until it’s completely coated and then use a fork to fish it out. Place the truffle back on the foil/butter paper. Repeat this process with all the truffles. Once you’ve dipped all the truffles, take a toothpick and trace a circle around the bottom of each truffle. This is so that we don’t have a lot of excess chocolate stuck awkwardly to the bottom of the truffle once the outside chocolate has hardened. Place the truffles somewhere cool to cool. They should be ready to eat in 20-30 minutes. Serve in little paper cups. Enjoy!

Tags chocolate truffle, cream cheese truffle, dark chocolate, DIY, food, photos, Recipes, strawberry chocolate, strawberry chocolate truffles, strawberry cream cheese truffles

Chocolate Chocolate Truffles Food General Recipes

Sugar-Coated Dark Chocolate Truffles with Orange Cream Cheese Centers

Post author By Megha Jandhyala
Post date April 11, 2012
14 Comments on Sugar-Coated Dark Chocolate Truffles with Orange Cream Cheese Centers

This is my favourite kind of truffle so far. In fact, I can honestly say that I’ve never eaten a more delicious chocolate truffle. Mmmm.

It all started with me wandering into my kitchen last evening. I went through my fridge and cabinets, trying to think of a new combination of flavours that I’d never tried in a truffle before. All sorts of ingredients caught my attention, but my eyes kept returning to the block of cream cheese in my fridge. As I wrote in Sunday’s post about dark chocolate cream cheese truffles, I absolutely love the flavour of cream cheese. So I decided to stick with cream cheese, and see if I couldn’t come up with a slightly better version of Sunday’s recipe.

Sunday’s truffles were cream cheese truffles through and through; not only did they have cream cheese centers, the truffles themselves were made with cream cheese. While I liked Sunday’s truffles, what I found was that the texture of the truffle changes when you use cream cheese instead of heavy/whipping cream (this is what is used in traditional truffles); the texture isn’t as velvety and creamy. Generally speaking, this is an acceptable compromise to me because I love the flavour of cream cheese. But Sunday’s experiment taught me that if you’re willing to go to the extra trouble of making cream cheese centers, you don’t need to make this compromise at all! In fact, I thought that the cream cheese in the chocolate didn’t add much in terms of flavour, it was upstaged by the intense flavour of the dark chocolate and by the cream cheese in the center. I could reduce the amount of chocolate I added, but I wanted to make dark chocolate truffles, not milk chocolate ones.

Therefore, for today’s project, I decided to use a traditional dark chocolate ganache (made with cream) to make the truffles, and then incorporate the cream cheese flavour I love so much by making cream cheese centers for them. But that wasn’t all, I added a twist or two to the recipe. You see, I wanted to play around a little with the flavours in my kitchen; it would have been boring to simply recreate, with a small modification, Sundays recipe.

First, I wanted a citrus flavour to the cream cheese, so I added some orange liqueur (Cointreau). Second, I thought it might be fun to coat the truffles with something I’ve never tried before, large brown sugar crystals. But since they’re sweet, I decided to make the chocolate a bit bitter. So I replaced some of the dark chocolate in the ganache recipe with unsweetened chocolate. Here’s what I ended up with:

And boy am I glad I played instead of sticking to what I know. The truffles were just right in terms of texture and flavour! They were creamy and squishy and the cream cheese centers were gooey, soft, and a little orang-ey. To top it all, the sugar-coating was literally the sugar-coating, it balanced the bitterness of the chocolate perfectly. Here is a shot of half a truffle after I’d bitten into it. I think it illustrates the squishiness and softness I am talking about:

The flavours danced together on my tongue with just enough complexity to be intriguing; they acted in perfect concert, I had to close my eyes and savour it. I haven’t felt this excited since I discovered chocolate brazil nut butter.

If you’ve been sold by my mad ravings or these pictures, go ahead and give it a go! The only tough part of the process is actually shaping the truffles with the cream cheese centers. This can be a little messy and it requires patience.

Update: Another important thing to note is that the sugar-coating absorbs moisture. So the outside of the truffle can get wet and sticky over a day or two. The solution that I have found for this problem is to roll the truffles in brown-sugar right before (or even a few hours before) serving them.

Ingredients for the Truffles:

2.5 ounces dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa solids)

1 ounce unsweetened chocolate

1/2 cup heavy/whipping cream

A small dollop of butter

A pinch of salt

Brown sugar to coat the truffles

Ingredients for the Cream Cheese Centers:

50 g cream cheese (at room temperature)

A dollop of butter

2-4 tablespoons of icing sugar

2-3 teaspoons of Cointreau or Grand Marnier

Method:

Heat the cream in a pan until it just begins to bubble and then pour it over the chocolate:

Let the mixture stand for a few minutes. Then very gently mix the chocolate and cream:

Add the butter and salt and mix until you have a smooth ganache:

Cover the bowl and let the ganache cool to room temperature, then place it in the fridge.

While the ganache hardens, let’s make the cream cheese filling. Take another bowl, put the cream cheese in it and whip it up with a mixer, until it’s smooth.

Now add the butter, two tablespoons of icing sugar and a teaspoon of Cointreau and whip it all up.

Taste the mixture. If you think it needs more sugar or Cointreau add some more. When it tastes right, cover the bowl and put it in the fridge.

Once the ganache has been in the fridge for about an hour, take it out and see if it’s firmed up. It should be firm but not hard. If it’s firm take it out along with the cream cheese filling. You will also need a bowl with a few tablespoons of brown sugar in it and a large plate covered with foil or butter paper. Now you’re ready to begin shaping the truffles.

Portion out the ganache onto the foil or butter paper, with each portion measuring about a tablespoon. When you’ve scooped out the lot take the first portion and shape it into a ball. Then, flatten it on your hand like a mini-tortilla or chapathi:

Now scoop a bit of cream cheese filling onto the center of the ‘chocolate chapathi’:

Now fold the chocolate over the cream cheese.

Finally, roll the whole thing carefully into a ball. I don’t have a photograph of this because by this time my hands were covered in chocolate. Repeat this until all the ganache has been used up.

For the final step, start with one of the first few truffles you shaped. (When you work with the truffles they will get a little melted and squishy from your body heat. This is why i suggest picking up one of the first few truffles you worked on; by now it will have cooled down and firmed up again.) Gently roll it about in your hand to make the surface a little sticky. Roll the truffle in the bowl of brown sugar so that it is completely coated.

Repeat until all the truffles are coated. And there you’re all done! Enjoy your delicious truffles, I know I did 😉

Tags chocolate, chocolate truffle, cream cheese truffle, dark chocolate, DIY, food, recipe

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: