Chocolate Truffles Cooking Class!

Missy Tippens

My daughter and I took a truffle making class last weekend and made some delicious and pretty candies! We took the class at Cook's Warehouse with Chef Thomas Numprasong--who was a great teacher.

I thought I'd share some photos today. The chocolates turned out so pretty!

First, these are bags of the couverture chocolate (real chocolate made with cocoa butter) that we used--milk and white. There was also a dark chocolate, also from Barry Cacao, that we used to make candy kisses. You need to make sure you're buying a good chocolate. I looked up this brand when I got home. An 11 pound bag is around $90! So it is good quality, not the candy bark I've been buying at the grocery store.

Side note: the chef brought samples of regular chocolate chips and white chocolate candy bark so we could taste and compare. I have to say they're very different.

With the chocolate, we had to temper it, which is what gives it a nice sheen and flavor. (You don't have to temper chocolate if you're just melting it to eat on ice cream or something like that.)

There are different methods for tempering. Chef Thomas showed us two. One is the seed method (using a big hunk of already-tempered chocolate). The other is heating it to a certain temp, which we did over a double boiler, and then pouring it out on a cool marble/granite surface. Both help the chocolate re-establish the original crystals. You can read more about it here. I won't go through all the steps. It's pretty time consuming!

We also made our fillings. For the milk chocolate: peanut butter caramel. For the white chocolate: pomegranate molasses. YUM.

Here are our dark chocolate kisses that we piped using disposable pastry bags. It took us a a few rows to get the hang of making pretty kisses. The first ones looked... well, you can see one that looks more like a Tootsie Roll. Yep, I admit I made that one. Oops. LOL 

Here are some photos of the making of the milk and white chocolate truffles. The peanut butter caramel while cooling...

Chef Michelle (aka my daughter). :)

Okay, so here's the real chef. He actually worked to get the chocolate to the perfect temp.

While he did so, we decorated our molds with red and white cocoa butter and gold dust.

When the chocolate was ready, he poured it into our molds, banged it to help it settle, then poured it back out (this step was to lightly coat the molds). Then we let them sit to harden. Once ready, we piped in the caramel and pressed a peanut or two into the caramel. (I don't have photos of that.)

Then the chef once again poured chocolate on top to close them up. Once it was poured over the whole tray he scraped off the excess. We let them cool (and hurried it a bit by putting it in the freezer since class went long). Once they were cool, it was time to pop them out.

See how pretty!! The hearts are the ones my daughter and I made in our tray. We made milk chocolate ones. There are two white chocolates and also some other shapes also in our tray since we all shared.

More close up.

Oh, y'all, these tasted so good! The class lasted almost four hours, so it'll be interesting to see how long it would take to make these at home. I think I might try making them for gifts at Christmas. We'll see how crafty I get! I might just buy some at the wonderful local chocolate shop, Chocolaterie. I will no longer complain about the cost at stores like that! Because now I know the cost of the supplies as well as the time spent to make them. If I ever make them by myself, I'll be sure to share the endeavor here!

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