Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and what better way to celebrate than with your own homemade raspberry truffles? This simple recipe will yield around 50 delicious truffles that will stimulate your taste buds with sweet chocolate and a juicy raspberry core. There’s enough to wrap as a gift and indulge yourself too!
You will need:
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 7 oz fine-quality bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped in a food processor
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• 6 oz fresh raspberries (1 cup)
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
Directions:
1. Let the cream simmer in a pot, adding the chopped chocolate when the cream is hot enough to melt it.
2. Add your raspberry brandy. Take the pot off the stove and stir the ganache slowly until there are no lumps left.
3. Throw in your raspberries (about four to five at a time depending on the size of pot) and fold the chocolate over them.
4. Pick each berry up using two forks, shifting it back and forth between the utensils to let the extra chocolate drip off and to create a round shape.
5. Continue this process until you’ve gotten through all your raspberries, placing each one on your tray as you go.
6. When you’re done, let your truffles chill for at least one hour. Optional: Shake some cocoa powder over the truffles for some added flavor and aesthetics.
When heating the cream, if some of it seems to stick to the pot, a little more can be added to compensate. If you choose to use a knife to chop up the chocolate, the chocolate should be no thicker than the handle on a fork. The framboise, a type of raspberry flavored alcohol, can be substituted with either raspberry juice or another type of fruity food flavoring, although for this batch we used vanilla extract (it still turned out pretty well). Since the raspberries were not in season, the truffles turned out a little on the sour side so another variant of berry can be used if desired. Also, truffles can be re-dipped if you prefer a thicker coat of chocolate.
Since we had a lot of leftover chocolate, we started covering other food items, like nuts, with the ganache. We ended up with chocolate covered macadamia nuts and a kind of cranberry chocolate bark (I’m not sure how to word this), both of which were delicious—so go ahead and experiment with hatever you happen to have!
