Well and Truly Cooked: Ganache Swirls

This is me at my laziest best. But honestly, many people don't know the old blog and they'd have to wade through a lot of unnecessary stuff to reach this. So, I just thought of repackaging old wine in new bottles and add to my blog posts here. :D

Yes! This is as easy as it gets. All you chocoholics out there, listen up! Here’s a simple way to knock the socks off anyone you want to impress. These homemade chocolate truffles look delicious and are very very very very smooth and chocolatey. And the best part is that they’re so simple to make!

Boil a packet of fresh cream. Pour over a bowl of chopped cooking chocolate (which you can easily get in Nilgiris). Let it sit for half a minute and then start stirring. It should look something like this…

Yes, this is the same recipe as you would normally make for chocolate ganache which can be used to fill and cover cakes. But once it reaches this smooth consistency, let it cool a while and then pop it in the freezer for sometime.

Try and keep it in the freezer for at least half an hour. Here at home, Saboor wouldn’t let me keep it inside for even twenty minutes! The first time I made this, it was a big mess. I scooped spoonfuls of the ganache and rolled it around an almond but it started melting in my hand itself. No problem, I licked it off, but then I had to give up on creating something which looked as good as it tasted. Of course, the whole plate got over in less than a minute. Maybe thirty seconds!

This time, I decided not to use almonds. I suddenly remembered my trusty old piping bag. I fitted it with a star nozzle, pushed some of the slightly hardened ganache inside it and piped out swirls of chocolate.

As you can see, these have already started melting.

So pipe them out quickly. I didn’t feel like greasing the plate but if you want these truffles to slide out easily, then its a good idea. These truffles had to be scraped off with a spoon and once again, the plate was empty in mere seconds. Luckily, I remembered to take pictures before showing the plate to the kids!

This chocolate ganache has many uses. The initial runny version can be used to cover cakes. When it hardens, you can use it to pipe rosettes as I have done. I think my truffles need more chocolate because they don’t seem to be getting hard enough. Or we’re not leaving them alone that long!

If you can get them hard enough and if you don’t really mind messy hands, do try making the original chocolate truffles which are made by rolling around small portions of the ganache into perfect rounds which are then dipped in cocoa powder. The bitterness of the cocoa gives way into the sweetness of the truffle inside and that is surely like a bite of heaven!

The bitter cocoa covering will not be appreciated at home so I didn’t bother to do it. But anyway, I got to lick the bowl clean and that happened only because the kids were watching TV and didn’t know that I wasn’t washing up in the kitchen!