General Truffle Troubleshooting

[Wendy DeBord]

Your welcome.............don't forget to heed my warning, it will set up incredible fast. You can pipe it right away into balls (you won't have time to fuss), then go back and dip them.

[misstenacity]

One more question (I keep making smaller batches of "truffle goo", tweaking the recipe as I go):

My latest batch is too bitter. Can I re-melt it and add sugar, or will the re-melting do bad things to the currently perfect consistency of the mix?

Thank you!

Andrea

http://tenacity.net

[Wendy DeBord]

You can remelt ganche. Just watch that you don't over heat it or it will seperate. I nuke it in the microwave and then burr whip it.

Adding more sugar........thats a bit of a problem..............hum..........just regular sugar won't melt into your ganche and it will make your creamy ganche crunchie. I'd add some corn syrup or glucose...........but they will also thin down your ganche (depending upon how much you use), which was the first problem.

How much ganche do you have? Aprox. # of cups or oz.'s?.....that will help us guestimate how much corn syrup you could add.

[misstenacity]

Ah, sorry for the late reply, Wendy. My ganache is still "resting" in the fridge and it is about 1.5 cups worth.

I have corn syrup and I know that's very sweet so I will add just a bit of that to some re-warmed ganache and see what happens to the texture. Should be fine - thanks for the suggestions!

Andrea

http://tenacity.net

[Ling]

I hope it's not too late, but perhaps you could melt some milk chocolate and add that to your ganache?

[David J.]

I do use the pound to a cup ratio for some molded chocolates (with various other additions for flavor) but wouldn't try that for palettes.  I have found that milk chocolate does generally make a gooey ganache and I like to blend it with dark chocolate to give it a bit more body.  Butter will also give more body.  You could make a ganache out of butter and chocolate without the cream and you'll get a firmer, more sliceable product.

Whipping makes a great texture but will shorten your shelf life so make 'em tasty so they get eaten quickly.  I would whip up some nice butter and fold in the gooey ganache.  You'll have to play with the proportions to suit your chocolate and your taste.  If all else fails or you're just over this particular bowl of ganache, warm it and pour it over a bowl of ice cream or warm it and add some warm milk and marshmallows.

←

Thanks for the tips. I decided to take your advice and use the soft ganache for a topping and make a new bactch using 12oz of chocolate to 1/2 cup of cream and it worked out beautifully. My centers were not perfectly round and on the large size (I got 19 when the recipie suggested I would get 30-35), but the folks who ate them thought they were store bought until I told them. The centers were wonderfully soft and the coating was pretty even. I had just a touch of blooming on a couple of the truffles, probably because I put them in the freezer to set instead of the refrigerator. I'll have to make room in the fridge next time.

[Popcorn]

Wendy,

I'm going to try your whipping trick this weekend making ganache. I hope it will get me closer to my goal, a largish truffle with a firm yet tender/almost crumbly texture, that is solid at room temperature but due to (hopefully) whipped in air melts quickly in the mouth.

two quick questions:

if I''m going to do this from scratch, is there an ideal chocolate/cream ratio, or would I use a standard ganache recipe?

Do I whip the ganache while it's still warm or let it cool completely?

okay I lied, third question:

If I whipped the ganache til firm, could I use a melon baller to scoop out round truffles, or would I need to pipe them out?

Many thanks.

[Wendy DeBord]

Wendy,

I'm going to try your whipping trick this weekend making ganache.  I hope it will get me closer to my goal, a largish truffle with a firm yet tender/almost crumbly texture, that is solid at room temperature but due to (hopefully) whipped in air melts quickly in the mouth.

two quick questions:

if I''m going to do this from scratch, is there an ideal chocolate/cream ratio, or would I use a standard ganache recipe? 

Do I whip the ganache while it's still warm or let it cool completely?

okay I lied, third question:

If I whipped the ganache til firm, could I use a melon baller to scoop out round truffles, or would I need to pipe them out? 

Many thanks.

←

It will work with any ganche (chocolate & cream) recipe that I'm aware of but adding other items like fruit purees and caramel might effect it. You can whip the ganche from warm or room temp.. If it's cold from the refridgerator it will be extremely difficult to do and probably do serious harm to your mixer.

Your third questions depends upon when you stop whipping and begin forming. If you stop whipping and the ganche is too soft/warm it will pool and not retain its shape. But if it gets too cool even a melon baller will be hard to use. You want to work with this at just the right temp....... just as it's starting to hit room temp..

Oh, and you will get a light as air truffle that will melt in your mouth.........and it will definately be Crumbly. It's the crumbly part that makes scooping them with a melon baller difficult if your ganche is too cool.

HTH

[annachan]

Alright, it's our first year trying to make truffles as gifts and we ran into a few problems.

1) Paillete Feuilletine - we were told when getting them that they will stay crispy in chocolate. Well, that didn't happen in our ganache. It turned into a soggy, paperlike texture. It there a trick to keeping them crispy in the ganache? If not, what else can I do with them? (Other than eating them out of the bag....yum!)

2) I'm seeing stripes on my chocolate coating. The chocolate I used for dipping (61% E. Guittard) was too thick. So I added some cocoa butter and tempered the chocolate again. It worked great for dipping, but it seems the cocoa butter had separated and produced white stripes. Other than dipping everything in the milk chocolate I have, what else can I do? Is there a proper way of adding cocoa butter to the chocolate? Would I still have an issue if I get a tempering machine?

3) We're been using the recipes in the Chocolate Obsession book. There are two major differences I see in that book and some other books. One is the use of invert sugar (I'm running really low). The other is the use of an immersion blender (my new KA immersion blender died in the middle of the third batch) to incorporate butter into the ganache. How crucial are these steps? In what way will the truffles be different if I were to use recipes that exclude these steps?

TIA for your help. If we can't get the truffles right, my friends are stuck with toffee, honeycomb and marshmallow this year....

[Trishiad]

Anna,

For fueilletine you must make a ganache without cream. Any cream, or other liquid, will soften your crunch.

I'm wondering why your chocolate was too thick in the first place. E. Guittard is a high quality chocolate and shouldn't require any additional cocoa butter. I guess, maybe, you could hit them with a hair dryer enough to just melt the surface and roll them in cocoa powder or nuts or something else, maybe.

With Michael's recipes, I never use the invert. I just don't like it. The blender will give your ganache a smoother mouthfeel because it breaks down the fat particles more. You can beat the butter in by hand and will probably never notice any difference though.

[annachan]

With Michael's recipes, I never use the invert.  I just don't like it. 

←

If you leave out the invert, do you use another sugar in place of it? The same amount?

I wonder if the invert is used so that the truffles can be kept longer.

[Trishiad]

I don't use anything in place of the invert. The invert is used for both preservative and mouthfeel.

[Kerry Beal]

With Michael's recipes, I never use the invert.  I just don't like it. 

←

If you leave out the invert, do you use another sugar in place of it? The same amount?

I wonder if the invert is used so that the truffles can be kept longer.

←

Yup, invert sugar decreases the water available to bacteria to use to cause spoilage, thereby prolonging the life of your truffles. I often add a little glucose (white corn syrup) and I almost always add some alchohol to my truffles to help prolong their lifespan.

[aguynamedrobert]

Adding cocoa butter should not change anything in the tempering process...If streaks occur then the temper was off for sure. If the chocolate is too thick when dipping the truffles then you might have let the temperature come down to far and it might have thickened.....I would just say to check your tempering process because the problem lies in there somehow with the white streaks...

-Robert

www.chocolateguild.com

www.chocolatiernoel.com

[David J.]

Alright, it's our first year trying to make truffles as gifts and we ran into a few problems.

1) Paillete Feuilletine - we were told when getting them that they will stay crispy in chocolate. Well, that didn't happen in our ganache. It turned into a soggy, paperlike texture. It there a trick to keeping them crispy in the ganache? If not, what else can I do with them? (Other than eating them out of the bag....yum!)

2) I'm seeing stripes on my chocolate coating. The chocolate I used for dipping (61% E. Guittard) was too thick. So I added some cocoa butter and tempered the chocolate again. It worked great for dipping, but it seems the cocoa butter had separated and produced white stripes. Other than dipping everything in the milk chocolate I have, what else can I do? Is there a proper way of adding cocoa butter to the chocolate? Would I still have an issue if I get a tempering machine?

←

1) I had that problem the first time I tried to make a crunchy hazelnut praline ganache. Eliminate all liquid in favor of an all butter ganache and you will retain your crunch. Just remember to add the butter at room temperature so it doesn't split the ganache.

2) Stripes in the chocolate probably means that it cooled too slowly. Jean-Pierre Wybauw mentioned that in the class I took a couple weeks ago. You will also notice the streaking effect in the leftover chocolate if you leave it to cool slowly. JPW suggests working at 68F and placing the chocolates at 50F after they start to set. Tempered chocolate has the proper seed crystals, but just as important is the cooling since it determines what happens to that seed. Too fast a cooling and you dip down into the range where unstable crystals form, and too slow a cooling allows the crystals to grow large and coarse. Setting chocolate is also exothermic, and if you let it cool too slowly it can actually heat up enough to take parts of it out of temper again. That's why large molds sometimes have white patches at the top.

[annachan]

Alright, it's our first year trying to make truffles as gifts and we ran into a few problems.

1) Paillete Feuilletine - we were told when getting them that they will stay crispy in chocolate. Well, that didn't happen in our ganache. It turned into a soggy, paperlike texture. It there a trick to keeping them crispy in the ganache? If not, what else can I do with them? (Other than eating them out of the bag....yum!)

2) I'm seeing stripes on my chocolate coating. The chocolate I used for dipping (61% E. Guittard) was too thick. So I added some cocoa butter and tempered the chocolate again. It worked great for dipping, but it seems the cocoa butter had separated and produced white stripes. Other than dipping everything in the milk chocolate I have, what else can I do? Is there a proper way of adding cocoa butter to the chocolate? Would I still have an issue if I get a tempering machine?

←

1) I had that problem the first time I tried to make a crunchy hazelnut praline ganache. Eliminate all liquid in favor of an all butter ganache and you will retain your crunch. Just remember to add the butter at room temperature so it doesn't split the ganache.

←

After doing some searching online, the recipes I saw was to just combine melted chocolate with praline paste to make the ganache and then add the feuiletine. Does that sound right? Should I add butter to that? If so, how much?

[Desiderio]

There was a thread on this matter here it is

Crunchy praline

[Kerry Beal]

Alright, it's our first year trying to make truffles as gifts and we ran into a few problems.

1) Paillete Feuilletine - we were told when getting them that they will stay crispy in chocolate. Well, that didn't happen in our ganache. It turned into a soggy, paperlike texture. It there a trick to keeping them crispy in the ganache? If not, what else can I do with them? (Other than eating them out of the bag....yum!)

2) I'm seeing stripes on my chocolate coating. The chocolate I used for dipping (61% E. Guittard) was too thick. So I added some cocoa butter and tempered the chocolate again. It worked great for dipping, but it seems the cocoa butter had separated and produced white stripes. Other than dipping everything in the milk chocolate I have, what else can I do? Is there a proper way of adding cocoa butter to the chocolate? Would I still have an issue if I get a tempering machine?

←

1) I had that problem the first time I tried to make a crunchy hazelnut praline ganache. Eliminate all liquid in favor of an all butter ganache and you will retain your crunch. Just remember to add the butter at room temperature so it doesn't split the ganache.

←

After doing some searching online, the recipes I saw was to just combine melted chocolate with praline paste to make the ganache and then add the feuiletine. Does that sound right? Should I add butter to that? If so, how much?

←

That should work. No need to add extra butter.

[annachan]

Thanks for all the help everyone!

Another question: I tempered some milk chocolate for dipping today. Tempered it to the temperature it should be. Put the bowl in another bowl lined with a heating pad. Still notice some white streaks toward the end of the batch. I'm wondering if the heating pad isn't enough to hold the chocolate in temper. Should I go back to leaving the chocolate over a pot of warm water instead?

[Kerry Beal]

Thanks for all the help everyone!

Another question: I tempered some milk chocolate for dipping today. Tempered it to the temperature it should be. Put the bowl in another bowl lined with a heating pad. Still notice some white streaks toward the end of the batch. I'm wondering if the heating pad isn't enough to hold the chocolate in temper. Should http:/o back to leaving the chocolate over a pot of warm water instead?

←

Check out the discussion of cooling here. There is an excellent discussion about streaks forming in the remaining chocolate. Start with post #8.

[John DePaula]

Thanks for all the help everyone!

Another question: I tempered some milk chocolate for dipping today. Tempered it to the temperature it should be. Put the bowl in another bowl lined with a heating pad. Still notice some white streaks toward the end of the batch. I'm wondering if the heating pad isn't enough to hold the chocolate in temper. Should I go back to leaving the chocolate over a pot of warm water instead?

←

I think that a heating pad can help to keep chocolate warm but the line is fine and, depending on the heating pad, it could easily go too hot in places.

Before I got my Mol d'art melter, I used a large volume of warm water kept just at the right temp. I could keep a mass of chocolate in temper for quite a long time that way.

Obviously, you have to be plenty careful not to get any water in your chocolate.

ETA: You really need to be vigilant about stirring, as well. It's necessary to keep the crystals evenly dispersed throughout the chocolate.

Edited November 28, 2006 by John DePaula (log)

[Anna N]

Thanks for all the help everyone!

Another question: I tempered some milk chocolate for dipping today. Tempered it to the temperature it should be. Put the bowl in another bowl lined with a heating pad. Still notice some white streaks toward the end of the batch. I'm wondering if the heating pad isn't enough to hold the chocolate in temper. Should http:/o back to leaving the chocolate over a pot of warm water instead?

←

Check out the discussion of cooling here. There is an excellent discussion about streaks forming in the remaining chocolate. Start with post #8.

←

I think this is the link you want, Kerry.

[Desiderio]

As John said, keep the chocolate in motion its the trick here.I dont have the melter yet ( thinking about get one soon ) so I melt my chocolate on bain marie ( bowl dont touch the water ) then set on my counter and stir stir stir till gets down to the right temperature,I use an hairdryer to keep the chocolate form thickening if I am using it for long , but you need to be very carefull if it gets too hot you need to keep stirring it and then use it ,get the feeling for it, and another thing , the more chocolate you have in your pan the longer the tmeper stays , but keep stirring

[annachan]

As John said, keep the chocolate in motion its the trick here.I dont have the melter yet ( thinking about get one soon ) so I melt my chocolate on bain marie ( bowl dont touch the water ) then set on my counter and stir stir stir till gets down to the right temperature,I use an hairdryer to keep the chocolate form thickening if I am using it for long , but you need to be very carefull if it gets too hot you need to keep stirring it and then use it ,get the feeling for it, and another thing , the more chocolate you have in your pan the longer the tmeper stays , but keep stirring 

←

I think that was a problem, I didn't stir enough. No luck in being able to get a tempering machine wthin the next week or two. I'm thinking of investing in an electric pot stirrer.

[Desiderio]

As John said, keep the chocolate in motion its the trick here.I dont have the melter yet ( thinking about get one soon ) so I melt my chocolate on bain marie ( bowl dont touch the water ) then set on my counter and stir stir stir till gets down to the right temperature,I use an hairdryer to keep the chocolate form thickening if I am using it for long , but you need to be very carefull if it gets too hot you need to keep stirring it and then use it ,get the feeling for it, and another thing , the more chocolate you have in your pan the longer the tmeper stays , but keep stirring 

←

I think that was a problem, I didn't stir enough. No luck in being able to get a tempering machine wthin the next week or two. I'm thinking of investing in an electric pot stirrer.

←

Invest in some Mycryo and hair dryer that would do