Chocolate Truffle Tarts

After all the apple cooking I have done of late, I finally got sick of cooking with the one fruit & decided I needed an intense chocolate fix. Megan was coming over for lunch so I hit her with these Chocolate Truffle tarts. As the name suggests it is pretty much a truffle though in tart form & with the added bonus of an oreo base & lots of luscious raspberries hidden in the tart & the cream it is served with. Very rich & delicious though you would struggle to eat more than one without feeling sick! A quick note, the recipe was to serve four yet I made eight & still had some chocolate mix leftover which with extreme willpower I threw out instead of just eating up. The recipe comes from a recent Delicious magazine.

Chocolate Truffle Tarts

150g chocolate cream biscuits (Oreo’s are what I used)
120g unsalted butter, melted
300ml thickened cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
250g good quality dark chocolate, roughly chopped
300g raspberries
1 tablespoon icing sugar
½ cup cocoa powder, to dust

Lightly grease the base & sides of eight 8cm x 2cm loose bottomed tart pans. Process biscuits in a food processor until fine crumbs form. Add melted butter & process until well combined. Press biscuit mix firmly over bases of tart pans to cover. Chill while you make the filling.

Heat 200ml cream in a pan with the vanilla over low heat & bring to just below boiling point. Remove from heat, add chocolate & stir until melted. Transfer to a bowl & cool completely.

Using a fork, crush half the berries in a bowl. Spread over biscuit bases, then cover with chocolate mixture. Cover and freeze for 2-3 hours until firm. (Remove from freezer 30 minutes before serving.)

Combine icing sugar & remaining berries in a bowl. Crush with fork until sugar dissolves. Press mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl & discard seeds (I omitted this step being quite happy to have my berries seeds & all). Whip remaining 100ml cream & swirl through berry puree. Dust tarts with cocoa & top with berry cream

Chocolate Truffles & Sugar High Friday!

For the latest Sugar High Friday the theme is truffles & the host is The Passionate Cook. Now I love truffles yet have never made them before so I thought I would start at the beginning & make some traditional French style truffles from Green & Black’s Chocolate Cook book. These are predominantly a chocolate ganache, dusted with cocoa powder. Apparently they were first called truffles as they looked like real freshly dug truffles of the fungus type! They are absolutely wickedly delicious, dense & rich in a very adult dark chocolatey way that I love and I feel even more guilty eating these as opposed to bought ones as I know exactly what went into them. Not too time consuming though you do have to start at least 3 hours or so before hand to get the required amount of refrigeration time. Also today in Melbourne it’s quite hot, up there in the 30’s, so I found I had to roll them in batches as the mixture started getting a bit melty after about 10 truffles, so I popped the mix batch in the fridge every now & then. Yum, now I have to try & give some away before I eat them all.

Micah’s Truffles

275g dark chocolate, minimum 60% cocoa solids, broken into pieces
250ml double cream
50g unsalted butter, at room temperature
50g cocoa powder

Place the chocolate in a large bowl. Bring the cream to the boil & pur it over the chocolate. Stir gently until the chocolate has melted, trying not to create bubbles. Leave to cool for 2 minutes, then add the butter in 2 stages & stir in gently. Once the butter is incorporated, the ganache should be smooth & glossy with no oil slick on the surface. Set the mix in the fridge for a minimum of 3 hours or overnight.

Remove from the fridge about 15 minutes before you want to make the truffles, depending on room temperature. Put the cocoa into a bowl. Ensure your hands are cold & dry, then dust them with cocoa. Take teaspoonfuls of the ganache mix & roll the mixture in to a ball in your cocoa dusted hands. Drop each truffle in the bowl of cocoa, roll it around then toss between your palms to remove any excess powder. The truffles can then be returned to the fridge and kept for up to 2 days as long as they are stored in an airtight container. Serve straight from the fridge or at room temperature.