Info
- Course: Dessert
- Skill Level: Moderate
- Cost: Moderate
- Favorited: 3 Times
Can be made ahead of time.
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White Chocolate and Grapefruit Truffles with Hazelnuts
Cookbook
So many discoveries in the kitchen stem from serendipity. This truffle recipe was an accidental discovery fueled by the unavailability of oranges for Chanterelle’s classic orange-hazelnut white chocolate truffle. We did have grapefruits in the kitchen, so are substituted them for the oranges, and the new flavor became so popular that it replaced the old classic.
Yield : 50 to 54 small truffles
Ingredients
Truffle:
- ¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons (3 fluid ounces) heavy cream
- ½ cup ground hazelnuts (from 2 ounces whole blanched nuts)
- 1 tablespoon grapefruit zest (from 1 grapefruit)
- 8 ounces white chocolate
- 1 tablespoon (½ ounce) butter, at room temperature
Truffle Coating:
- 3 ounces white chocolate
- ¾ cup ground hazelnuts (from 3 ounces whole blanched nuts)
Special Tools and Pans:
- Fine-mesh strainer
- Bain-marie (see Notes)
- Small melon baller, 7/8 inch or 22 millimeters in diameter
Directions
Infuse the cream:
In a small saucepan, combine the cream and zest and cook over medium heat to almost boiling. Remove from the heat and let steep for 10 minutes. Pass the cream through a strainer and discard the zest.
Melt the white chocolate:
In the bowl of a bain-marie, melt the white chocolate, stirring with a rubber spatula as it melts. Do not overheat the chocolate--it should never be so hot that you cannot stick the tip of your finger in it. (White chocolate has an even lower melting point than dark chocolate, and will lump up if overheated.)
Emulsify the chocolate and the cream to make ganache:
Remove the melted chocolate from the heat and slowly whisk in the infused cream. (At first the chocolate might seize up and separate--do not worry.) Continue to whisk until the mixture (now a ganache) is smooth, creamy, and holds the lines of a whisk. Slowly whisk in the butter until incorporated and then add the hazelnuts. Scrape the ganache into a small bowl and refrigerate for 2 hours.
Scoop the truffles:
Fill a glass with very hot tap water. Dip a small melon bailer into the hot water and tap on the counter to remove any excess water. Plunge the melon bailer into the chilled ganache Elr enough down so that it sits completely in the ganache. Rotate the melon bailer clockwise 360 degrees and remove from the ganache. Tap the melon bailer to release the ball onto a plate or tray. Repeat this process until all the ganache has been scooped into balls. Transfer the plate to the refrigerator and chill.
Make the truffle coating and dip the truffles:
In the bowl of a bain-marie, melt the white chocolate, stirring with a rubber spatula as it melts. Remove from the heat and cool for 15 minutes.
Set up an assembly line on your counter. From left to right, place the chilled ganache balls, the bowl of melted chocolate, a tray with the ground hazelnuts, and a container to hold your finished truffles.
With your left hand, pick up 2 ganache balls and dip them quickly into the melted chocolate and roll them around until coated. Drop the balls with your left hand into the ground hazelnuts. With your right hand roll the balls until completely enrobed. Pick up the finished candies with your right hand and place them in the container.
Serving Suggestions:
Serve these truffles at room temperature on a tray with coffee for dessert.
Notes
Storage: The truffles will keep, in a sealed container and refrigerated, for 2 weeks.
Bain-marie is the French cooking term for a metal bowl or container that can sit over or in simmering water to keep the contents of the container or bowl hot—basically, a makeshift double boiler. Fill a pot large enough to hold a medium-sized mixing bowl on top with 1 inch of water and set over low heat. When the water is simmering, set the bowl on top of the pot. If you are using a bain-marie for a sabayon, simmer the water over medium-high heat.
Tempered chocolate:
Tempering chocolate refers to the process by which the fat in pure chocolate-cocoa butter, which is made up of a few triglycerides (fats and oils composed of three fatty acid molecules attached to a glycerol molecule)-solidifies and cools in a tightly packed crystal formation at room temperature, leaving the chocolate with gloss, a snap, and a wonderful melt-in-your-mouth quality. If not melted, coaxed, and cooled properly, the triglycerides will settle into crystal structures that are unstable, have poor appearance and texture, and melt easily.
Chocolate is always cooled and tempered into bars and chips before it leaves the chocolate factory. For most chocolate recipes--brownies, cakes, souffles, custards, ice creams, and tarts--you do not need to worry about tempering chocolate. If you are planning on making dipped strawberries or cookies, chocolate candies, or chocolate garnishes, you must retemper chocolate after you melt it. That is, you must carefully modulate the cooling process so that the triglycerides in the cocoa butter take shape into three-dimensional crystal structures, forming a stable solid.
© 2006 Kate Zuckerman
Note from Cookstr's Editors
Nutritional information is based on 50 servings.
Nutritional Information
Nutrients per serving
59 kcal
2 % daily value
1 % daily value
0 % daily value
39 mg
6 mg
1 g
4 g
0 g
4 g
4 mg
6 mg
2 g
5 g
1 % daily value
