Ganache in 2nd Wybauw Book

[Em J]

Hi everyone, I'm new to the forum but I've been avidly reading all the threads I can find on chocolate making - I've been chocolatiering since May last year and feel like I've picked so much up from the books I've been collecting, plus the wealth of information that's available on here.

I'm after making a champagne truffle for next month, but I've only got one recipe in my books by William Curley which seems to use way more cream than I'm used to - 435ml to 500g dark chocolate, with 175ml champagne added. It's made a really soft ganache which I'm going to have trouble rolling without it melting I think. I noticed there was a recipe in the 2nd Wybauw book, but I only have the 3rd in my collection - I wondered if anyone had tried it and if they thought it was any good?

If anyone knows of another recipe that they've had good results with I'd love to hear it.

Hope everyone's having a fantastically chocolatey weekend!

[piracer]

its been a while since ive made truffles but for the ganache i always used a 1:1 ratio of cream to chocolate though your right, it is difficult to roll. I guess you could lower the ratio but the problem is of course you might loose that richness from the cream which is kinda the point of truffles.

[Chris Hennes]

I think your best bet is to simply scale back the cream to suit your tastes and give it a try: I generally have no shortage of volunteer beta-testers .

[Kerry Beal]

Yeah - that's a lot of liquid! I'd take Chris's advice and decrease the cream. Some recipes add some marc de champagne (essentially brandy) which boosts the flavour and helps the shelf life.

Never had a champagne truffle that I really liked.

And welcome Em - consider joining us the chocolate conference in March if you can.

[Kerry Beal]

Here's one from the Nick Malgieri book Chocolate - it's not weight

1/2 cup heavy cream

2 tbsp butter

1 tbsp white corn syrup

9 ounces dark or milk chocolate

1 tbsp cognac or other fine brandy

1 tbsp dark rum

- notice no actual champagne!

[Kerry Beal]

Sweet Gold by Siefert - has a Champagne Caramel Truffle, but it pipes in to hollow truffle shells (which I expect your original recipe is meant for too).

PM me if you want me to send it along. It says to eat within 2 days to get the bubbles.

[Em J]

Thanks so much for the replies and the warm welcome.

Might have another play with the champagne, but I have to admit the Malgieri one looks like it might be easier. The one I'd found was using Curley's basic ganache from his Couture Chocolate book with the addition of champagne - so all his recipes are very cream heavy.

Kerry - I'd love to join you for the conference, it looks like something I'd really enjoy and get a lot out of, but being in the UK it's not something I'll be able to do this year, more's the pity.

I've been playing with passion fruit purée this weekend, with some exciting results - I've not done anything with fruit purée so far so it's been nice to have something new to try.

[lebowits]

I actually just made the Wybauw formula this weekend. I had been searching for Marc de Champagne for some time and finally got a lead from someone I met in a class to pick it up from EuroGourmet in St. Louis (ask for Didier). Marc de Champagne is a very concentrated flavoring "gel" which pours and smells very strongly of wine. After making the ganache I tasted it before it and was a bit underwhelmed by the flavor so I doubled the Marc de Champagne (60 grams vs 30). That greatly improved the flavor. The result is still a very soft ganache which requires truffle shells. I expect that the product could be tightened up into something which can be rolled, but you might have to boost the Marc de Champagne again to punch it up over the taste of the chocolate.

[Chris Hennes]

I basically always double Wybauw's suggested flavoring quantities: I made an espresso bonbon yesterday that needed at least double what he suggested to get a really good coffee flavor.

[Elle Bee]

Late to this thread, but I'll add this information anyway, in hopes that it may save others the kind of endless researching I found myself doing a few months ago:

Another source for the elusive Marc de Champagne is l'Epicerie. This is a gellified product, like what Steve mentioned above. I suppose gellification is what enables it to be offered for sale in interstate commerce without violating about 5,000 alcoholic beverage regulations. Anyway, l'Epicerie offers it in two sizes. Since there's no pictures provided on the product page, I took one - this is the 2 liter (small) size:

For those who aren't familiar with it, Marc de Champagne is a brandy distilled from the pomace of Champagne grapes after pressing. There seems to be only one distillery that makes it - owned by the Goyard family in France - and they purchase virtually all of the pomace produced by the Champagne region's wineries and use it for making Marc de Champagne. As you can imagine, annual production is fairly low. Presumably, much of it is used to make the gellified version of the product.

I spent DAYS looking everywhere online for a liquor store anywhere in the U.S. that carried the real thing. That search was absolutely fruitless, and I finally concluded that it's just not available here. Which would make sense, considering that the only people who might want it seem to be serious confectioners. Even if we were a large enough community to justify importing it to the U.S., the headache of distributing single bottles around the country in compliance with all the state liquor laws would be enough to make anyone want to throw themselves off the nearest parapet.

So, for us, the gellified version is the only version. Hold that thought while we talk about truffles for a minute....

Champagne truffles, as Wybauw points out, are not made with Champagne because it must be boiled to kill the yeast and boiling destroys the flavor. Marc de Champage does not have this drawback - like any other spirit, it may simply be incorporated into the ganache directly from the bottle. Moreover, since its alcohol content is 60% by volume, Marc de Champagne contributes far less available water to the formulation than a wine like Champagne would. But here's the thing...

Marc de Champagne, being a brandy, ISN'T Champagne, nor does it taste particularly like Champagne. When we use it to make truffles, we are REALLY just making brandy truffles that happen to permit the proper and legal use of the "Champagne" appellation to identify them. And while ANY brandy or grappa with a similar flavor profile would produce exactly the same truffle, much (if not all) of the romance of a "Champagne Truffle" seems to come from the name.

Which is why I searched high and low for Marc de Champagne, and finally settled for the gellified stuff, when I had a perfectly delicious - and locally produced! - grappa that I would have preferred to use instead. Incidentally, I don't really adore Champagne truffles all that much myself, but other people do... so I make them. My chief interest in them comes from the opportunity to experiment endlessly with ways to keep the pop rocks "alive" longer.

And now back to the product itself....

Brandies (including Marc de Champagne) and eaux de vie in regular bottled form are typically 60% alcohol by volume, the remainder being water. If you want to determine the amount of water these products add to a ganache formulation, it is possible to make that calculation using basic math - that is, it's possible to do it in a way resulting in an answer that is sufficiently in the ballpark to be reasonably reliable.

Gellified Marc de Champagne, by contrast, is 50% ABV, and contains (according to the label) "Marc de Champagne spirit, quassia, gelling agent." That's quite confusing, since quassia IS a gelling agent. I suspect the ONLY additive is quassia, and that the label is just very badly written. Whether that's the case or not, the bigger issue is that the quantities are unspecified. Accordingly, it is extremely difficult - perhaps impossible - for anyone (not a lab) to calculate the water content. Moreover, there seems to be absolutely no guidance anywhere for reliably substituting these products for the real thing. Add to all that the headache of trying to rework Wybauw's recipe into something that could be rolled and hand dipped, and... well, let's just say my usually sweet disposition was challenged for several days running.

In the end I came up with a formulation that was acceptably tasty, if VERY insufficiently creamy (probably due to overestimating the water content, underestimating the effects of the gelling agent, and overcompensating with added cocoa butter), and with a shelf life in excess of three weeks. I'm still working on it. I definitely agree with the findings of the previous posters who would increase the amount of flavoring called for in the recipe. Here's what the last batch looked like:

I hope this of use to somebody. And if anyone has more information on using these gellified products, I'd love to hear it.

Edited February 24, 2012 by Elle Bee (log)