bfujimoto

For approximately 100 truffles I use the following proportions: 1 lb. bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate, 1 cup heavy cream, 1 stick butter, and 1/2 cup liquid flavoring (i.e., the concentrated, unsweetened raspberry juice). I don't add any sugar or glucose--the chocolate is already sweet enough.

Just throwing more advice your way: I just finished making over 200 raspberry truffles, with no leakage. I use pure, unsweetened, concentrated raspberry juice for my truffles. Take 1 quart of raspberry juice and reduce it down to 1 cup. Good luck.

I've had good luck using 1.5 pounds of white chocolate, 1 cup of cream, and 1 stick butter. This makes for a runnier ganache when melted, but it sets up very well after refrigerated.

When I make ginger truffles, I hand grate 1-pound of fresh ginger (if using a food processor, you will need about 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 pounds to allow for waste) and then take the pulp in my hand and squeeze the hell out of it to extract every last drop of juice from it. Depending on the freshness of the ginger, I usually end up with *about* 1/2 cup of ginger juice. If I have more than 1/2 cup of ginger juice, I subtract that excess amount from the amount of cream that I would have normally used. I add all of the ginger juice that I get into my ganache mixture. Mind you, my truffle recipe is, starting out, much more runny than most. However, I like my flavorings to be very pronounced (which probably has something to do with the fact that I've managed to burn off most of my taste buds through too much hot pepper). Even with all of this extra liquid, though, after the ganache sets, it sets well. As for other flavors, if you don't want to go into liquid or oil extracts (many of which, as you know, are completely natural), then what I've found works is to use approximately 5 times the amount of fresh herbs that you would think would be appropriate (this includes Earl Grey tea), and let it steep for several hours, or overnight. I've never done a cold infusion--only hot infusions using the cream. Also, finely chop or muddle your herbs before throwing them into the cream. Hope this helps.

Hi, all. Thanks for the advice--please keep them coming. I'm MsRamsey's truffle-making friend. Simply sprinkling the salt on top of the completed truffle would most certainly work. However, if I wanted to have a nice crunch *within* the ganache center itself, I was thinking of perhaps using Hawaiian rock salt, which comes in good-sized crystals, which wouldn't melt as readily as fleur de sel. I haven't used Malden (sp?) salt before so I don't know the properties of it. My thought was to mix in the salt after the ganace has cooled to room temp. The question still remains, though--how much salt should I use for a 1-pound batch? As was stated before, I don't want a salty ganache; rather, a ganche with definite sweet (predominately) and the unexpected hit (i.e., crunch) of the salt. Yet I still want enough salt to make it taste like it wasn't a mistake.