Tag Archives: balls

truffles and champagne – class

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Venue: Soho House, West Hollywood

truffles

went to a Honing Your Hosting event last night, anticipating the holidays and curious about their tips to improve upon my themed endeavors. first station was homemade truffles.

ingredients

as opposed to the soft consistency of the chocolate base from the rum balls i had recently made (i blame the sour cream) – the base they started us out with just had equal parts chocolate (dark) and cream. this made for candies that held their form nicely during the rolling process and had a uniform looking final product.

step: chop up chocolate into small pieces and put into a bowl. pour warm cream over it – off of heat and stir to combine. at this point when you’re adding in the hot cream you can apparently add in a splash of a booze of your liking. the combined mixture is chilled and then scooped into small amounts to be rolled – wear latex gloves.

topping

dip chilled chocolate balls into plain melted chocolate – they did this using a toothpick which made it easy to shake off the excess. sprinkle on edible gold leaf for super fancy looking truffles. or roll in chopped nuts (they had pistachios and walnuts on hand), graham cracker crumbs mixed with some melted chocolate (to form a crumble), cocoa nibs or cocoa powder. the coating of chocolate hardens nicely after you let the candies sit for a bit after rolling.

drinks

since my preference was (and is always) the champagne tasting portion i just watched and learned how to make the featured drink – Grey Goose La Poire Almond Froth.

Ingredients:
1 and 1/2 parts Grey Goose La Poire Flavored Vodka
1/2 part brandy
1 part unsweetened almond milk
3/4 part agave nectar

in cocktail shaker filled with ice add all ingredients and shake vigorously. strain into glass and garnish with freshly grated nutmeg. happy entertaining.

Chocolate Rum Balls

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Soundtrack: chatting with a friend

finished chocolate rum balls

Supplies:
8 in square pan
measuring cups/spoons
small saucepan
heatproof silicone spatula
blender/food processor/handheld blender (i used a handheld)
Ingredients:
1 and 1/2 cups semisweet choc chips - divided
1/4 c sour cream
1 Tbs honey
1/4 tsp salt
scant 1 c ground graham crackers
1/2 c confectioners sugar
scant 1/2 c ground nuts (i used peanut/almond mix just cause)
1/4 c melted butter
1/4 c rum

measure out honey, sour cream, salt (i combined the salt in with the sour cream), and 1 cup chocolate chips

somehow i forgot to take a pic of this next step!! i’m blaming good conversation with an even better friend

combine ingredients in small pan and melt over low heat. pour into 8 inch pan (honestly this could have just been poured into a freezer safe bowl). let freeze for 30 min.

rolling

roll chilled chocolate mixture into balls – return to freezer when the chocolate starts to cool and get melty until it hardens up again otherwise it will be too soft to roll into balls. i used food safe rubber gloves since this is a pretty messy step. also – i stopped using the teaspoon after the first couple because i found it easier just to pinch off a general idea of how big i wanted the chocolate balls to be. the chocolate kept getting stuck in the teaspoon so it was only useful to use once to get a general idea of the sizing.

chocolate balls

finished chilled chocolate balls

ingredients

grind up graham crackers, nuts and chocolate chips (if you haven’t yet). the hand held mixer worked, but make sure to use your hand to cover the blending container because the ingredients have a tendency to fly out and everywhere

ingredients

ground up toppings – graham crackers, almond/peanut mix, powdered sugar, chocolate chips

toppings

combine cracker crumbs, sugar, nuts, butter and rum. place ground up chocolate chips in a big enough container that you can drop the coated balls in and cover in chocolate chips. the graham/rum coating is pretty wet and sticky so make sure you have enough ground up chocolate chips. this may mean curbing snacking on chips prior to grinding process…

finished chocolate rum balls

dip (frozen-ish) ball in graham/rum mix – trying to get on as much coating as possible. immediately drop in and roll in ground chocolate chips. put in fridge until ready to eat.

noms

Lessons Learned:

  • using a hand held to grind the chocolate chips was challenging – they do not grind easily and kept flying out of the container. also it took a lot of shaking and re-grinding to get a good consistency
  • rolling the chocolate is way easier the colder the chocolate mixture is – keep it in the freezer for as long as possible before rolling and keep returning to freezer to re harden as you are rolling if it starts to get soft
  • i went heavy on the rum and lighter on the butter for the topping mixture, playing to my audience – however this did effect the coating consistency
  • the graham/rum coating was pretty wet, it is easier to coat the chocolate balls in it and then immediately drop in ground chocolate chips and roll around to make sure as much graham/rum coating sticks as possible

Review: strong rum taste which was what i was going for, i’ve been partial to rum as the weather has cooled off lately. the candy making process took a long time overall because of the re-freezing process during the initial candy rolling step, but not a hard recipe to master. the chocolate balls need to stay cool because they seem to melt and don’t hold their shape, which would make it difficult to package as a gift in any other way than an even layer – and even then the bottom part of the ball seems to level off a little bit. still pretty fancy looking though.