My Weekend with Chocolate…

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I recently had an office party to attend and the criteria for our Yankee Gift Swap was that it had to be edible and/or consumable. Immediately I thought CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES. I make mine with dark rum (preferably Captain Morgan but I didn’t have any on hand so I used regular dark rum), and espresso. And I love to roll them in a variety of things, from the standard cocoa or confectioner’s sugar, to toasted coconut, almonds, nonpareils and chocolate jimmies. By the way, a Dirt Devil does a great job on those nonpareils when they fall all over the place.

I had been thinking of ways to create a chocolate box to hold the truffles but it didn’t take long before I decided a chocolate bowl would be much easier and less time consuming. I dipped small balloons in chocolate and set them aside to cool. One I rolled completely in nonpareils, the other I only rimmed the top portion of the bowl. As they were cooling, I thought I’d use one to hold a variety of the rolled truffles, the other I filled with truffle mixture as if it were a giant, solid truffle half.

My husband came up with a fantastic idea of a chocolate hand to hold the bowl of truffles. I was on it STAT! First I tried a pink dishwashing glove (for the photo op I added a diamond – you know, girl’s best friend!) but realized I wouldn’t be able to let it harden with my hand in it. So I filled it with sugar, assuming that once firm, I’d simply pour the sugar out of the glove and the glove would slip right out of the chocolate. WRONG. And I even sprayed with vegetable oil. Chocolate hand failure #1…you see where I’m headed? Hubby said to use a latex glove that I could blow up, you know, like Howie Mandel? So I did. It wasn’t the most shapely hand, but it would suffice. When I dipped the latex balloons, one I sprayed and one I did not, both came out fine. However, I think where there is pressure, spray wouldn’t matter. So I chose not to spray the hand (it’s difficult to get chocolate to stick to a greased piece of latex) and dipped away. I set it on a wax lined sheet pan to cool in the fridge.

In the meantime, I made my truffles while the chocolate hand and bowl were cooling.

CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES:

12 oz bittersweet chocolate chips (I prefer Sharffenberger chocolate) set aside in a large mixing bowl

2/3 cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon dark rum

1 teaspoon espresso powder (instant)

Heat the cream and espresso in a heavy saucepan until just boiling. Add the rum and remove from heat. Pour over chocolate chips and stir until completely melted and combined (should appear shiny). Refrigerate for a few hours until firm enough to roll. I use a very small Oxo cookie scoop for easy release. Roll quickly (to avoid warming the chocolate too much) and roll in your choice of coatings. Let chill in the refrigerator until ready to serve. Truffles can sit at room temperature, but they will soften quite a bit.

So, back to the chocolate hand. The second one. I knew something wasn’t right when I pulled it out of the fridge and saw that some of the air had escaped the glove. When I cut the knot, there was no depressurization therefore the glove didn’t immediately pull away from the chocolate as I had hoped. Hmmm….I tried to gently pull that glove out of the hand. But it wouldn’t budge. Chocolate hand failure #2. But I stopped there, I ran out of time.

So one chocolate bowl held a variety of truffles, the other was filled with solid truffle. But to that mixture I added almonds, cranberries and toasted coconut and filled the bowl. But I still had melted chocolate left…what else could I dip? I dipped pretzels. I dipped apples in caramel and then in chocolate (and rolled them in toasted almonds). And still I had melted chocolate. I poured the chocolate into a squeeze bottle and piped out some table decorations for the party. Naturally I had to do a chocolate swan for The Swan Agency Sotheby’s International Realty for throwing the party! And for fun, I added a REALTOR symbol along with $ and a Happy Holidays! Can you tell I love chocolate?