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I'm wondering if adding invert sugar such as corn syrup, glucose, honey, or Trimoline would help. I forgot to mention that I add honey or glucose to the cream before combining with the melted chocolate. I have not really noticed a grainyness problem with my ganache, even after a week in the fridge. I'm starting to work on my Valentine's day truffles so I'll try to remember to make batches with and without invert sugar to see how they hold up over the course of a few days.

I've been using Recchiuti's technique off and on for the last 20 years, even before he published his book, and it has always worked for me. I'm a "flunked-out" chemist, having been done in by calculus and thermodynamics. However, my reasoning for using the technique is that it is just an emulsion of two liquids. Instead of oil and vinegar, we are using melted chocolate and cream. I was a bit more conservative in my temperatures of the liquids because I did not know if the emulsifying process would be exothermic and give off more heat, or be endothermic and absorb heat, or cool down. I thought that 115 would be too close to 120 degrees where the chocolate would completely breakdown, so I started at 110 degrees and got very good results. I also tried using melted chocolate at 115 and cream at 110 and still got very good results. I find this method to emulsify much better than pouring heated cream over chopped chocolate then stirring with a spatlula. I was kind of freaked out the first time I did it because the initial mix was very, very shiny. As I continued to mix with my trusty Bamix, the mixture suddenly got very dull and sort of "coagulated". I immediately stopped at that point and tasted the resulting ganache. It was silky smooth even without adding any butter. It got even creamier when I folded in the butter. I found this ganache to be much firmer in texture than ganache made the standard way. I use the melted chocolate/heated cream method when I want to pipe my ganache as it sets faster than the normal way so I can pipe immediately rather than wait several hours for the ganache to set. After reading his book, I've been meaning to write to Mr. Recchiuti to tell him of our similar techniques and also the fact that we both like to use "grosso" lavender, which is actually a lavendin, which is a lavender hybrid.

I used to worry about making "perfect" truffles, but then then when I gave the truffles to friends/customers, they remarked, "Wow, handmade truffles", so I stopped worrying about it. I tried several techniques of hand rolling and wand dipping to see which would work best and found that I can use them all to vary the presentation of the truffles. By controlling the viscosity of the chocolate, I can get a very coarse texture when hand rolling with a "thick" chocolate and a smoother texture if I hand roll with a "thin, less viscous" chocolate. If I want a really smooth texture I will dip with a wand or fork. As for cutting truffles... I came up with a "compromise" between using a guitar and hot dry knife to cut my ganache slabs. It's not as fast as the guitar, but I think it's a bit faster that cleaning the hot knife after each cut. I use an 8 X 8 cake pan, which yields a slab that is 7.75 X 7.75 inches. After precoating the bottom with chocolate, I mark the top of the slab into a 10 X 10 grid which results in each piece being about .77 in/ 19mm square. I quarter the slab so I have four smaller squares, then cut each of them into five "strips", then cut each strip into five pieces. I use a thin-bladed kitchen knife to make each cut. If the ganache sticks to the blade, I take a thin paring knife and run it between the blade and ganache on each side. This effectively "self cleans" the blade to prepare it for the next cut and you don't have to deal with cleaning and heating the blade. The cuts are not as clean, but the enrobing will hide the imperfections. I run the paring knife from the handle of the kitchen knife towards the tip to lessen the chance of any "accidents" if the paring knife slips. It's safer to cut away from your hand rather than towards your hand.

Flo Braker offered a technique where you melt some butter with some heavy cream, then fold it back into the rest of you heavy cream which results in up to 50% butterfat. I'll have to dig into her book to get the exact measurements. I think it was in "The Simple Art of Perfect Baking".

I just did a Christmas run of 5 batches of 100 truffles each. Each batch was 'precoated' by hand. I coated the first two batches of Frangelico and Orangecello truffles by had rolling the finish coat. It took about 3/4 pound of tempered chocolate to coat the 200 truffles. I then did a special dark sugar free batch for a friend. The couverture seemed to be overly thick and was clumping up on the first couple of rounds so I thinned it with about 7% cocoa butter, re-tempered, and continued to dip with a wand. I was having problems with "bigfoot" due to the decrease in viscosity. Then I remembered Alanamoana's hint on dragging the wand across the surface of the chocolate and wiping the bottom. I got much better results and after the first few, I had truffles with an acceptable footprint. My friend was very happy with the results as they had a nice, smooth, thick coating, which had a nice snap at first bite, and a very soft creamy center which just oozed away into chocolate nirvana. Encouraged by the wand dipping, I dipped batch 4 (Chambord) using Waialua Estates 70% dark. This chocolate is very runny and was causing me to really adjust the dunk time. I ended up with lots of bigfoot truffles which I had to trim so they would fit in my candy cups. After the fact, I realized I should have reduced the operating temperature instead of increasing it. However, there's always the next batch to do. I got bored of dipping rounds so batch 5 (Waialua Coffee) was done by precoating the ganache slab then dipping squares with a fork. The first 50 were done with "stock" couverture. I ended up using about 1.25 pounds to coat 50 truffles which I think is too much. I made another batch of couverture thinned with about 5% cocoa butter. Much better, I ended up using only half a pound to coat the remaining 50 truffle squares. Dipping with a wand or fork takes way more time and more couverture than hand rolling, but I needed a way to identify my flavors without any "garnish". If I want a smooth finish, I'll just have to allow extra time to use a wand/fork and make sure I temper twice as much chocolate as when I hand roll. If I'm in a rush or want a thin delicate coating, I'll hand roll. I think I can roll three or four truffles in the time it takes me to dip one with a wand. I will get better and faster if I keep practicing with the wand. Maybe I'll split my next batch into hand roll and wand dip portions and accurately note the time it takes to dip and the amount of chocolate used to enrobe the truffles. The best part of all of this truffling is that no truffles developed cracks and only two hand rolled truffles leaked. I'm convinced that double coating is the way to ensure no cracks or leaks. Right now, I'm all truffled out and I have to finish packing the truffles for delivery. Mele Kalikimaka e ka Hauoli Makahiki Hou. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Hawaii. Alooooooooooooohaaaaaa.

I double coat my round truffles. I dab tempered chocolate on my fingertips and gently roll the round until it is coated. Once the first coat sets, I use a wand to dip if I want a smooth finish, or do a second had coat if I want a textured finish. Another way is a 'pre-bottoming' technique I got from the folks a Guittard Chocolates. Pipe out dabs of tempered chocolate on a parchment sheet. The spacing should be far enough apart so your rounds won't touch each other. Once the dabs set, you can dip your rounds and center them on the hardened dabs. You'll have to find the right height and diameter for the dabs so your rounds will rest on them and not roll off, which would defeat the purpose of the pre-bottoming. You also might try lowering your room temperature to 65 - 68 degrees so the chocolate will set faster, lessening the chance of melting through the bottom.

I was doing a truffle run a few nights ago and had some leftover ganache and tempered chocolate so I decided to attempt a version of Peter Greweling's beehives. My truffle boxes are sized for #3 and #4 candy cups which are on the small side so my beehives would be smaller than Peter's. I first spread tempered chocolate on a marble slab and cut out a series of 3/4" disks. I piped the ganache using a 1/8" diameter tip and made several hive 3- and 4-layers high. After filling and sealing the hives, I dipped them. I found that the tempered chocolate was a bit too thick and did not flow over the hives quickly enough as some of the bases melted through. I also ended up with several 'bigfoot' hives. However, once the chocolate set and we sampled the hives, we were very encouraged. The 3-layer hives did not seem to have enough honey as we did not get the burst of honey flavor as in the 4-layer hives. I would prefer to use 3-layer hives because it takes less overall time for a large run. Possible improvements for subsequent beehive production include: 1) Using a 1/16" diameter tip to pipe the ganache. Thinner walls will allow more honey to be filled into the hive. If this does not work, I may have to resort to 4-layer or even 5-layer hives (if they don't collapse). 2) Use a less viscous tempered chocolate to enrobe. I will try a different couverture or thin my existing couverture with cocoa butter to allow the chocolate to flow faster over the hives. 3) Use ready-made chocolate disks. This will save lots of time by not having to make my own disks. I will see if any of the pistoles I use are the appropriate size/thickness. I think E.Guittard or Cacao Barry, or Callebaut pistoles may work. 4) Decrease the ambient temperature of the work area. I currently enrobe truffles with the room temperature at about 70 - 72 degrees F, which is a bit warm, but it's a large commercial kitchen with a single air conditioner running at "full blast". I'm trying to figure out a way to create a micro-climate with an temperature of 65 - 68 degrees F. Maybe bringing in a floor standing air conditioner and using one of the smaller storage rooms for enrobing. 5) Practice, practice, practice. Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. Hopefully using a thinner couverture and reducing the room temperature will result in beehives with a smaller or no foot at all. Friends who sampled the hives loved them. One friend has a provisions shop and sells teas, confections, cookies, chocolates, specialties from Dean & Deluca and other sources. We thought it might be interesting to infuse ganache with some of her tea blends and fill the hives with different types of honey. I previously used her Tahitian vanilla/tangerine tea with Cacao Barry 60% Chocolat Amer with fantastic results. I'm looking forward to various making various tea/honey combinations. In the mean time, I have to finish my run of holiday truffles. I'm expecting a delivery of 10 pounds of Dole Plantations Waialua Estate Chocolate this afternoon and will be working frantically over the weekend and then some to complete my orders.

I just got a sample of Dole Foods 70% Waialua Chocolate to experiment with. Beans come from Dole's plantation on the North Shore of Oahu and are processed into chocolate by Guittard. Production of the chocolate is extremely limited and it only comes in 1.75 ounce bars. My samples were "bulk" with no wrappers. The bars have a "soft snap" compared to the "hard snap" of Valrhona, Scharffenberger, Cacao Barry, and Amedei chocolates I've used. The chocolate has a strong berry-like after taste. A friend of mine who loves milk chocolate and does not care for dark chocolate perceived it as a "sour" taste. The chocolate is creamy and has a nice mouthfeel. I only had a small nibble because I wanted to use the samples for ganache and enrobing. I made Wailalua Chocolate truffles flavored with Chambord, Orangecello, Amaretto, and Waialua coffee beans. The Chambord truffles turned out to be to "overflavored" for my tastes, so I will have to back off a bit on the Chambord for my next batch. The Orangecello truffles turned out to be a bit too soft, so I will have to adjust the cream/chocolate blend to get it a bit firmer. The orange flavor was "PERFECT"!!! The Amaretto truffles were one of the BEST truffles I've ever made. Nice creamy texture, rich chocolate flavor, then the Amaretto sneaks up on you and leaves a pleasant almond lingering. I've been developing a Kona coffee truffle using, but lost my source of beans when my friend sold his farm and moved to Oahu. When I requested the Waialua Chocolate sample, I also asked if I could get a sample of Waialua coffee beans and Dole obliged. The Waialua coffee truffles were my least favorite (but still pretty good). I had too much coffee and not enough cream and honey so the truffles were very firm. I also had a friend grind the beans into a Turkish grind which is the finest (smallest particulate size) grind. I left the grinds in the ganache so the truffles had a slightly gritty texture. Next time, I'll back off on the amount of coffee and strain the cream before adding to the chocolate. The truffles have a very nice flavor, with quite a bit of bite. I may also add some vanilla to round out the flavor a bit on the next batch. The truffles were enrobed with the following: Chambord - Cacao Barry 64% Orangecello - E Guittard 61% Amaretto - Combination of what was left of the Cacao Barry and E Guittard Waialua Coffee - Waialua 70% I'm very pleased with the results of the truffle experiments and look forward to using Waialua Chocolate in the future. I may even make several large batches to give away as Christmas gifts. Waialua Chocolate costs about $15.00/pound as opposed to $6.00/pound for Cacao Barry and $12.00/pound for E Guittard. I help a friend develop products for his company "Made in Hawaii Foods", so I'm thinking of an "All Hawaiian" line of truffles using Waialua Chocolate, Waialua Coffee, Kona Coffee, Hawaiian Vanilla beans, Alii Kula Lavender (from Maui), and local honeys I get from my beekeeper friends. They glady trade honey for truffles so I have an extensive supply of all kinds of honey.

Try Pacific O, I'o, or Mama's Fish House.

Nice stuff. Also check this link out, from my friend's bakery & cafe in Hawi town on the island of Hawaii.

I liked the lemongrass creme brulee at a friend's restaurant so I first learned to make a "classic" brulee before going crazy with my variations. At the same time, I saw that Mark Okumura, exec pastry chef at Alan Wong's at the time, made a "brulee sampler" featuring five mini brulees presented in Chinese porcelain soup spoons. Flavors included Kona Mocha, Thai Creme, Mango Creme, Lilikoi (passion fruit), and Hawaiian Vintage Chocolate. Here's a link to Mark's "Five Spoons of Creme Brulee" at GourmetSleuth I also made friends with lavender growers on Maui and got about two cups each of English lavender and Grosso lavendin (hybrid) buds to experiment with. The first time out, I put waaaaay tooooo much lavender in the cream infusion so it tasted very "soapy". Fortunately, I was able to dilute the infused cream with half and half to tone down the lavender. English lavender has a very delicate flavor and required about 2 teaspoons of buds per cup of cream. Grosso is much stronger so I ended up using about 1/2 teaspoon of buds per cup of cream. I have experimented with other flavors including coconut, matcha (green tea), Kona coffee, lemongrass, ginger, lemongrass/ginger, macadamia nut, hazelnut, tangerine, bergamot, lilikoi, New Mexico green chile, and Chinese five spice. Although they all got fairly good responses from my taste testers, the overwhelming favorite was the lemongrass/ginger brulee. It was quite challanging getting the balance of the lemongrass and ginger, but I finally developed a technique that works quite well for me. I made separate infusions of lemongrass creme and ginger cream. I then combined 50% lemongrass creme and 50% ginger creme and tasted it. I found it to be too "gingery" so I added a tablespoon or two of lemongrass cream at a time, until I got my desired balance. After that, I added plain cream to get the required volume for the recipe. Any leftover infused cream was used to make truffles and panna cotta. I now use this method to balance flavors for all kinds of brulees and plan to make a "Mexican chocoloate" or "Holy Mole-y" brulee with dark chocolate, Kona coffee, cinnamon, cumin, pepitas, rasins, and ancho and chipotle peppers. Recently I was at another friend's gelato factory to pick up my favorite giandjua gelato and he offered me a gelato made with green tea, lemongrass, and kafir lime that completely blew me away. Guess I'll have to see how well this combination translates to creme brulee and other desserts like panna cotta and truffles. I used to like bold, in-yer-face flavors, but the subtleties of all the flavors got lost in the mix. At one point a friend of mine mentioned that I had so much lemon in the lilikoi brulee that I may as well just make a lemon brulee and not waste the lilikoi. Another time, I put way to much green chili that it was too hot for most people, even though I really enjoyed the heat/pungency. Now it's how little of a flavoring I can use to achieve the desired taste.

What a coincidence that a root beer dessert came up. I'm in the 'early design' stages of a root beer truffle made with white chocolate. I think if I add a little vanilla extract to the white chocolate couverture I could call it a root beer float truffle. The ganache will be made with white chocolate, 'root beer flavoring', honey, heavy cream, and butter. I'm planning to use Zatarain's root beer extract and maybe root beer flavor oil used for lollipops to see which gives the best result. I also have a mixed case of 12 different root beer sodas in bottles. A root beer soda reduction could be another flavor possibility. Any other suggestions?

I've had great results using Chambord and a bit of Maury Island Raspberry Ecstasy in my truffles. I recently made friends with several beekeepers so I have an 'endless' supply of honey in exchange for a few truffles. I'm thinking of developing a recipe using very dark, 72% or higher cocoa mass chocolate with Chambord, raspberry purree, and honey to get the desired sweetness. The honey will also help keep the water activity in check and add its flavor to the mix. I've done a few experiments with 61% cocoa mass chocolate, Chambord, and honey and I've found it starts to get a bit too sweet for my tastes when I try to get the honey flavor to stand out. I think going with a less sweet chocolate will cut down on the sweetness so I will be able to add more honey. In general, I'm becoming more agressive with my use of various honeys as a "flavor" rather than just an anti-crystalizing agent. The best results so far came with a batch of "mystery" honey from a beekeeper. He just kept filling up a bucket with the remnants of his 'varietal' honeys until the bucket got full. I ended up with several pounds of the stuff and I love the complexity it adds to my ganache recipes. Now I have to recalibrate to get some of the firmness back as the ganaches are becoming too soft for my tastes. The rounds barely hold their shape even when chilled. I tried freezing, but it causes lots of leaks and cracks when I enrobe them with tempered chocolate.

I was helping a friend develop a "pumpkin pie" pastry cream for a special project he was working on and it turned out quite tasty. We had about half the can of pumpkin pie mix left so I decided to make some pumpkin pie truffles. I used E. Guittard white chocolate (31%) with heavy cream and pumpkin pie filling and it turned out way too sweet for my taste so I added some sour cream to tone the sweetness down. Even after a few hours of setting a room temperature (72 F), the texture was still much to soft to work with. It still tasted very sweet with very little pumpkin pie flavor. I decided to let the ganache set in the refrigerator overnight to see what happened. The next day I went back to the kitchen to enrobe my Chambord and Kona coffee truffles and checked the pumpkin pie ganache. The ganache developed a much better pumpkin pie flavor and set enough to form some rounds, but softened very quickly at room temperature. I placed all of the rounds in the freezer for about an hour and brought them out a dozen or so at a time to enrobe in dark chocolate. I was going to enrobe the pumpkin pie truffles with white chocolate, but the ganache was already much too sweet for my taste so I used the same dark chocolate that I used to enrobe my Chambord and Kona coffee truffles. The truffles well received by all so I think I'll keep them in my recipe collection for other pumpkin-friendly events. I may try using creme fraiche next time. Here's the recipe I used: 16 ounces E. Guittard white chocolate 6 ounces pumpkin pie filling 2 ounces heavy cream 4 ounces sour cream 1 ounce unsalted butter Chop the white chocolate and place in mixing bowl Bring filling, heavy cream, and sour cream to a simmer Pour cream mixture over white chocolate and let it rest for a few minutes Stir until all of the chocolate is melted and the mixture is uniformly combined. Stir in butter until well-combined. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and cool in refrigerator.

Try doing a Google search with stainless steel bar stock as the seach criteria. Local machine shops may stock 'popular' sizes. You can also check bed and bath places to see if they have stainless steel towel bars in the size you are looking for.

Try checking with sheet metal or machine shops in your area. They may be able to fabricate something for you out of stainless steel sheet metal. You could also see if they could make it out of aluminum which would be much lighter and a bit less expensive. These shops are a great source of metal baking sheets. You can often get some great deals on remnant pieces that can be used for baking or whatever. If you really want to make something on the cheap, head to your local hardware store and by some square tubing or angle iron of the desired height and cut it to size yourself.

alanamoana, When I dipped the truffles with a wand/fork, in addition to the leaks I would get some cracking on the truffles after about 30 minutes of cooling. I would try to patch them, but one night we were running late so I just left the cracked truffles to patch the following day. However the next evening when I went back to the kitchen to patch them, I guess they had a 'religous experience' overnight and 'healed themselves'. The cracks contracted so that the were unnoticeable unless you closely inspected the truffles. I normally start by tempering the chocolate in a Chocovision tempering machine and while its running, I form the rounds. I put them in the freezer until the chocolate is tempered, about 15 - 20 minutes, then I bring out about 2 - 3 dozen truffles at a time to coat. The kitchen is air conditioned with an ambient temperature of 70 degrees F. Since I switched to hand rolling, I have had no cracks and maybe one or two 'leakers'. I think the very thin couverture is able to 'flex' more as the truffle cools to it does not crack like the thicker dipped coating. As an interesting aside that probably only Hawaii people could relate to is that if I use a very viscous (thick) couverture and roll with textured gloves, the truffles often end up looking like li hing mui. I'm thinking of making an ume (ooh-may) (Japanese pickled plum ganache with white chocolate, enrobing it it white couverture and garnishing with seedless li hing mui/li hing mui powder. I did a white chocolate li hing mui torte for my friend's daughter's birthday a few years ago and all of the kids loved it, but most of the adults thought there was a bit too much li hing mui. Guess I'll back off on the flavoring this time around. We did not get our power back until 12:30am Monday morning. However friends that live near the Waiawa power plant got theirs back by 2:30pm Sunday afternoon. I've been experimenting with some sugar free/no sugar added deserts and made a batch of no sugar added lilikoi (passion fruit) mousse for my aunt's 100th birthday on Friday. I was going to bring the leftovers to the office on Monday, but the temp in the fridge got up to about 55 degrees F so I guess I'll have to dump the mousse; Guess I'll have to try again when I can harvest more lilikoi from the vines in my yard. There are several dozen flowers on the vines now so it's just a matter of time.

I used to enrobe truffles with a circular wand, but the ganache was so soft that the wand dug into the bottom of the truffle, making it difficult to slide off onto the cooling sheet. I got better results with a dipping fork, but there was still the indentation on the bottom of the truffle which became the top when I turned it onto the cooling sheet. I even tried 'prebottoming' by dabbing a bit of tempered chocloate on the cooling sheet then placing the coated round on the cooled dab, but I had a hard time getting the dab size so the truffle would not roll off. There were lots of leaks that needed patching so much time was wasted going back to remove the leaked ganache and dab tempered couverture over the leak. I recently did a run of 400 truffles for an office United Way fundraiser and ended up 'hand enrobing' as follows: 1) Shape the ganache into 5/8" rounds and chill thoroughly. 2) Place the round in the palm of my left hand. 3) Dab tempered couverture on the fingertips of my right hand. 4) Roll the round with both hands and place on Silpat mat to set. 5) Repeat steps 2-4 if a thicker shell is desired. Once you get going, you can really develop a nice rhythmn and it's MUCH FASTER than using a dipping wand or fork. It takes me about 15 - 20 seconds per round when I use the wand or fork. It takes about 5 seconds when I hand roll. As I was doing the run of 400 truffles, I started to experiment with different techniques. I found that the finished texture of the couverture could be controlled by several factors: a) Rolling on fingertips of both hands b) Rolling in the palms of both hands c) Rolling with fingertips of one hand and palm of the other hand. Further variations could be obtained by controlling the amount of couverture dabbed onto the fingertips/palm, varying the speed and pressure when rolling, and using smooth or textured gloves when rolling. One neat 'finesse' move I discovered was that I could make a nice equitorial ridge of couverture if I let the round roll off of between the gap of my second and third fingers onto the cooling sheet. Think of George Gervin or Michael Jordan doing a 'finger roll' layup instead of a dunk when going to the basket. The best part is that using this technique consumes much less couverture. I normally use about 1.5 pounds to coat 81 truffles with the wand/fork and it takes just under 40 minutes. Using the hand roll technique, I used less than one pound to coat all 400 truffles in less than 90 minutes with NO LEAKS and a very small foot with no need for trimming!!! Although the wand/fork method produces a smoother finish, it takes more time, couverture, and patching on my part. I think I'm going to hand roll from now on as it's faster, uses much less couverture, does not leak, and results in an interesting texture that will become my style of presentation.