Homemade Chocolate Peppermint Truffles

Hi, I'm Heather Bertinetti for eHow.com. Today, I'm going to share with you an easy recipe for chocolate truffles. So the holidays are finally here and moving forward into Christmastime I want to share with you my recipe for easy chocolate truffles using peppermint candies. It's perfect for the holidays and it looks awesome on a tablescape, so let's get to it. Here I have a half cup of cream that I'm going to bring to a boil and while this is boiling I have eight ounces of dark chocolate that I've chopped and now we're just going to make a ganache here. You've heard me talk about ganaches before. They're super simple to make and it's just emulsifying chocolate with cream. The reason why we heat up the heavy cream to a boiling point is that we make sure it's all completely melted. Okay, great, now that our cream has come to a boil, we'll pour it over our chocolate, make sure to scrape the pot so we get everything in there, shut off our heat and now I'm going to add just a little pinch of salt. So now I'm going to take my spatula and I'm going to submerge all my chocolate into the hot cream. Starting from the center, in a circular motion, we're going to emulsify and stir this ganache. You notice I rotate my bowl around just to make sure that everything gets coated and completely melted. So now in terms of ganaches which I think I've said before, this ratio of ganache is a little harder, meaning that we have less cream and more chocolate in it. This will make the structure for the truffle. See how it gets all glossy and smooth but yet there's still some lumps, continue to stir and make sure to get all the lumps out. Here's a quick tip for you, because there is such little amount of cream to chocolate and let's say your chocolate was really cold, out of the refrigerator, I usually keep my chocolate in the refrigerator so this does tend to happen sometimes. It seems a little separated and lump because it's not completely melted. So what you can do, take your glass bowl and on a very low flame, right on top of the burner, you can continue to melt your chocolate. And do not stop stirring. Okay, great, now we'll shut our heat off. Now I have another bowl set on the side and the reason why I do this is because I want to make sure that I get everything off the bottom of the original bowl that I started my ganache in, just to make sure everything is completely incorporated. So I'm going to transfer that to another bowl and we're going to cover this with plastic wrap and set it in the refrigerator for about an hour to get good and cold. Make sure it's tight and covered and then we'll move on to our second step. Okay guys our ganache is finally set and ready for scooping. So here's what I like to do, just a quick little tip, is if you have a scooper, they'll come out a lot more even. So you just kind of scrape it, it's a little messy, take it out and then roll it into a ball just like so. Now I have a little sheet pan here that I've put some parchment paper on so it doesn't stick and I'm just going to put my chocolate truffles onto the sheet pan. This is the first step in the chocolate truffles. So have some melted dark chocolate over a double boiler which is good to get on as you do this step. It should take about five to ten minutes to melt. You can use a microwave as well to melt the chocolate, just make sure not to burn it. So this gets a little messy but if you have kids at home I'm sure they won't mind getting their hands in some chocolate. So we'll set this aside. Now that my chocolate is completely melted, just so I don't burn my hands while I'm doing this, I'm going to transfer it into another clean bowl just like so. So if you thought the first part of this process is messy, this part is even messier. So now we're going to take my truffles. I'm just going to dip it really quickly into some melted chocolate and once again roll it around in my hand. Now we're going to dip it into our ground peppermint candies just like so. Make sure to coat them all in the candies. So I've done a couple of peppermint candy ones but I want to show you an alternative here. So using the same technique you can also just take regular cocoa powder. Now cocoa powder is such a neutral base. You can add pretty much anything you want to this. So you can add a little cayenne pepper, give it a little spice, a little cinnamon. So that's it, we're going to pop these into the refrigerator until our guests come and then we'll plate them up. These are so fun and festive. I can't wait to try one. I'm Heather Bertinetti for eHow.com. Catch me again.