Pastry Essentials | How to Make Ganache and the PERFECT Chocolate Truffles

1. Introduction: Hi everyone, my name is Lilly and among professional pastry chef. And today I'm going to show you how to make chocolate truffles and finish it in three ways. We're going to call there was cocoa powder with chocolate and with hazelnut powder. A chocolate truffle is essentially chocolate Ganesh other formed into individual pieces. A chocolate Ganesh is though emulsion between chocolate and cream, and we often add more sugar and fat and liquor to IT to improve the texture and the taste of it. A good truffle instantly mouse in your mouth. And there are two keys of creating it. First, you'll need a recipe with a good ratio, which will provide in this class. And second, you will need some proper technique that focuses on detail, including the temperature and the method of mixing. Our classes go for beginners as it is easy to reproduce at home. And they also offers experienced bakers some insights into professional method. By the end of this class, you'll learn the proper technique of emulsify and crystallizing your chocolate get Nash, which in turn will make the truffle with a perfect mouthfeel. I hope with the knowledge in this class, you'll feel confidence to create truffle in any setting. So let's get started. 2. Ingredients and tools : We're going to start off by making a Ganesh for the truffle. Let's go over the ingredients first. Here we have 64% dark chocolates. Make sure you choose a high-quality dark chocolate, because whatever chocolate you use is going to directly affect how good your truffles gonna taste. Also be sure to choose the chocolate that only contains cocoa butter and not vegetable oil as pure cocoa butter is what gives us silky, smooth texture for your truffle. Here's our cream or using thirty-five percent fresh whipping cream. I bought her. Make sure to use unsalted butter. Honey. Honey contains a lot of inverted sugar and they helps Ganesh to say soft after it crystallizes. And also it helps to lower the water activity off our Ganesh, which gives us a longer shelf life. And finally our Laker. I'm using brandy here because appears really well with our dark chocolate. But you can't also use whiskey, rum, grandma NEA, or any other Laker that contains at least 40% alcohol for a Ganesh, I'm going to show you how to make a what's a steak blender. I like to use stick blender because it's the most efficient and the easiest way to emulsify chocolate Ganesh wishes stick blender, you'll need the tall cup or container. The taller shape helps with more even blending and at the same time it prevents too much air to be introduced into the Ganesh. Will also need a thermometer. I have an infrared thermometer here, but you can also use a regular food thermometer is crucial for beginners, especially to use a thermometer because we need to make some pipe the Ganesh at very specific temperature range for a to properly emulsify and crystallize. So for our recipe, we're going to makes it at 35 to 40 degrees Celsius and pipe it as 16 to 18 degrees Celsius. And finally we have a rubber spatula and help us to scrape down the side as we go. If you don't have a stick blender, you can also mix by hand with a spatula or with a small food processor. The principal is essentially the same. 3. Making the chocolate ganache: We'll start by heating the cream, the butter, and the honey. So first I'm going to pull all the chocolate in our tall container. We're going to set it aside and he'd our cream, butter and honey. You want to make sure to scrape down the side really well because our quantity is already quite small, so you want to be as precise as possible. Then comes our butter. You can't add the Baader either at the beginning with the cream or at the end we make some Ganesh, but I like to add the butter at the beginning because it was sterilize the butter and helps to keep the chocolate fresh for longer and honey. So here I'm going to use medium heat to bring it to a simmer. We can see that little side is starting to bubble. Now's a good time to turn the heat off. Here's how chocolate, if you make the recipe before and know that your cream to chocolate ratio is correct, you can pour everything directly in one go. If this is their first time making the recipe, you can pour it in three stages, since I know the recipe works for sure. I'm just gonna pour everything into the chocolate. Normally, we need to let it sit for around 30 seconds to let the chocolate to start melting a bit before we start blending. This helps it to emulsify property. So at the chocolates sit for around 30 seconds, you can see that from the side, the chocolate is starting to melt. Now we can start using the hand blender. The key of using the hand blender is to try to not introduce any air into their mixture when you can put it in sideways like this. And we start mixing, makes sure that you don't move the stick up and down. Rather, you should be making your stake in a circular motion or left or right. If you want to move up a little bit east of uploading it directly app, you want to go EUS circular motion as small d, Take your blender out. The front part of your blender stays 40 emerged in that mixture. So you can see that our chocolate have become very shiny, elastic. That means a good emulsion is for me. So halfway through mixing, where we can do is we can scrape the site into the mixture of a little bit without pulling your blender out. Because every time you pull your brand, their app and put it back in, you introduce more air. But we don't want to introduce air into the Ganesh. So I stay sophists MOOC and maximize the shelf life off to chocolate. Okay, now that we can see our chocolate as smooth and shiny, last date, we know that everything is fully emulsified and we add our liquor. If your chocolate is property, also by adding more liquor too, is, should embrace the emotion. So after adding the liquor, we're doing the same thing of mixing it. You are circular motion. So adding the liquor not only has a PE cells is chocolate, but it also makes the chalk we're very moist and soft after it crystallizes. So you can see that the Nash is being pulled. This way. You know that if there is any area, we should always keep an eye on the temperature of the Ganesh and make sure that is between 35 to 40 degrees. If it falls more than 35 degrees and you can use a heat gun gently warm it up. We can see that our Ganesh is poverty emulsified. It is shiny and elastic. We can stop now the temperature I just checked it was 36 degrees, but it is still in the range of what we want. And now we're going to pour out in a wider container and let it cool for we pipe it. Good to have a clean container. You have to make sure that there's no water in the container. You can use a container like this or you can't use a bowl is just to help the international cool down faster. Even one korea out I can see how shiny and smooth Argonne National OK. I'm going to move around a little bit to flatten it. And finally I'm going to cover it with a plastic wrap. Make sure that you are a plastic wrap is touching that Ganesh. Now that I've covered there completely with the plastic wrap, I'm going to leave it to cool down and sat in the fridge. I only wanted to cool down, crystallize into a palpable consistency. If you leave it in the fridge for tool, it will crystallize completely into a solid, then it will be impossible to pipe for going to leave it in the fridge for around ourselves. And they'll show you what kind of texture we're looking forward to pipe it. 4. Preparing the tray and piping bag : While the Ganesh is cooling, we can prepare the tray where we're going to pipe the truffle. So here I have a baking tray and I'm going to lie it with a plastic wrap to make sure that our wraps stays on the tray. I'm going to spray a little bit with the oil. This way we know that the plastic wrap will stick to the tray. You can also align the tray with subtle comments or chocolate guitar sheets. We're aligning the trays so the truffle can be easily taken out when a crystallizes. So I'm going to set this aside and I'm going to prepare my hiking by. Here's a round tip that size number eight, you can use any round tip you have at home. The size of the tuple is based on personal preference. So you can really use any size I'll brown tip view like. So I'm going to put my tip in and cut the top off. And what I like to do is to put some piping bag into the tip. So when we fill the piping bag, the chocolate doesn't just leak out. And here I have a container tool prop without it. So it's easier for me to input the image into the bag. 5. Piping the ganache: Our Ganesh has been arresting the fridge for approximately around 15 minutes. We can see that the Ganesh have Harden, especially around the edges and the center is still quite soft. Normally, this is a good indicator that is ready to be piped. If the center also says really firm, it'll be really hard to pipes. Before we transfer it to our piping bag, we're gonna uncheck the firmness off this Ganesh. You can see that when I press I is not liquid anymore. It feels like a very smooth and soft, solid and right now are gonna ash is 18 degrees. We're going to transfer this Ganesh into our piping bag. We can see here why scuba was my spatula is set to a solid but is still very soft. This is a good texture through pipe. Make sure to pipe quickly. Doesn't melt into little balls. Makes sure that even if they're perfectly round or not, because we are going to shape it with our hand later. So here we're done with piping or Ganesh. We're going to leave it to crystallize at 15 degrees. If you don't have a home that's 15 degrees. You can also store in the fridge before we store them away will also need to uncover these. Just to prevent any moisture or dust from getting. I'm going to let a crystallized for at least 12 hours, so we'll come back to it tomorrow. 6. Coating in cocoa powder : Our truffles has been crystallizing overnight and now we're ready to code it. If you crystallize it in the fridge, you need to let it come back to approximately 18 degrees first before you work with it. Because when you just take a l from the fridge is too cold to work with it and they'll create some problems where you put a coating on it. But if you just been letting it sit in the chocolate fridge or if you sit at room temperature, you can work with it directly. First of all, I'm going to show you the first method. Where are you on E coded with cocoa powder. So here we have some cocoa powder. And here I have prepared a tray and the sieve. And I have a clean tray here to put the finished products is always good practice to first sieve the cocoa powder. Because as we can see here, we have like low lumps and we want to break the lumps first award we're going to do here is to take our truffle. You can shape it a little bit with your hand. Make sure that you're quite fast when you're working with it. And then just put it in the cocoa powder, would I like to do is to put several CAFO in the cocoa powder and their ROA at the same time, I find the more efficient. The reason why we're demonstrating the cocoa powder offers is because once we, you work with chocolate and that you're cocoa powder is gonna have a little bit of chocolate then not seeing it. And after I put several truffles in the cocoa powder, I'm just gonna gently roll I like this and just take them all with my hand. And the reason I like to use plastic wrap is you can lift your chocolate like this. And I'll stay quite easily. Since chocolate truffle are normally irregular shape, you actually don't need to shape it too much. The more you touch her, the more is going to melt. And we don't want that even when you shape and make sure you do it really quickly. Gently shake it. We can flesh them out. Here. We're down with coding directly. It was cocoa powder. I'm going to show you how to do it with first enroll being adding up bit Alpha melted chocolate than cocoa powder. 7. Coating in chocolate: Now I'm going to show you how to finish with melted chocolate and cocoa powder. First of all, we're going to melt the chocolate to around 34 degrees. So for this application, we're not really using perfectly tempered chocolate. Here I have a water bath and we want to make sure that our chocolate doesn't go over 34 degrees. And here I have what thermometer to keep an eye on the temperature and the spatula. But while we Mel over the water bath, you wanna make sure that the steam doesn't go into your chocolate. So you want to use a bigger bowl then your pot that we're going to use gentle heat to make sure that we don't create too much theme and also not to burn the chocolate in probing their truffle in chocolate first, then cocoa powder or create a chocolate shall around the truffle. So it has a slight different texture. Then directly rolling it in cocoa powder. You want to make sure that you're mixing the chocolate while heating it up so the heat is distributed more evenly. You count also melt your chocolate in the microwave. I'm going to check my temperature and make sure that it doesn't go pass 34 degrees. Normally, I stop heating around 32 because there's always residue heat. Knowledge that is 32. I'm going to turn our heat off and make sure to always wipe any moisture that's on the bowl. And after we take it off the heat, you want to pour it into a new bowl. Because a bot is solve is very warm. So if you leave it in the bowl is going to go pass your target temperature. And there is some lumps in the chocolate. You want to make sure that all of them are melted. So I'm going to keep mixing. So you want to keep mixing it. And knowledge that are chocolate has melted and checking the temperature is around 33 degrees. That's good too. But if a drops too low, you can use a heat dollar here dryer to warm up a little bit. We wanted it to be around 3334 degrees. Well, we melt the chocolate is easier to try to keep the temperature lower than our target temperature, which is 34. And then he does slightly with a heat gun or a hair dryer if it's not hot enough rather than warming it too much. Because if you heat it past 30-40 degrees, the structure of the chocolate change completely and it's not tempered at all anymore. And you'll have to go through the process of temporary property rather than just melting it. So that's a whole different topic. So what we want to do is always tried to work below the target temperature, which is 34, and use the heat gang or hair dryer to heat up slightly until we reach the target temperature. Well, here I have my chocolate ready. We're going to set up our station just like before. I have my chocolate truffles, my cocoa powder, and my tray tool put the finished chocolate eating it, thus get quite messy. That's why I like working with a glove. And I'm going to dip my finger in the chocolate a bit and put it in my palm like this. And put a Ganesh in my hand and role in the melted chocolate a little bit. And then put it in the cocoa powder. Does putting my hand roll my chocolate eating, and putting the cocoa powder after we put the truffle in the cocoa powder and makes sure you shake it a little bit. So as even the coda at what's cocoa powder, we're going to take it out of the tray. You can shape it just a little bit or leave as it is growing in your palm with some melted chocolate. Put it in cocoa powder and shake it. So if we're only working with a couple off the truffle, we don't need to worry too much about the temperature of the melted chocolate. But if you have a big batch, you need to keep an eye on the temperature of the chocolate and make sure that it stays around 34 degrees the whole time you're working with it. And we have to always make sure that our Truffle is not touching each other in the cocoa powder. So our cocoa powder is full of chocolate and we can pick it out at the same time. So I'm going to use seeing a clean glove just to keep everything clean and taking chocolate it out. I find working with ten then go off much easier than using four core chocolate, a fork or anything like that, especially for beginners. Now we're done with this method and I'm going to show you the next method where we code it with not powder. 8. Coating in hazelnut powder : Finally, I'm going to show you how to coda was not powder. So we're going to use hazelnut today as a demonstration. You can use Elman, pecan pistachio, really any knots you like. But you want to make sure that you use nuts that is lightly toasted. Because toasting it or release always a nutty aroma which makes the chocolate tastes really good. Where I'm gonna do here is to use nots grinder and grind it into powder. If you don't have enough grinder, you can also use a rolling pin and the Ziploc bag and just really pound and roll it into powder. So I'm just going to grind up. So I think I'm pretty good here. Nice and powdery. And we're going to pour it back to our Bull. Well, here's our ground-up hazelnut powder. When thing to take note is you don't want to over grinded, because if you grind it too much is going to turn it into a paste. Here we're back to our previous setup. I have my travel here, my hazelnut powder, cocoa powder and the traits will put the finished product. I'm going to take my travel. You can shape here that just a little bit if you want to. I'm gonna put it in that powder, Norway around their little bill with my hand and put it in the cocoa powder. Take our CAFO shaping her hand powder and putting the cocoa powder. When you're rolling your head and you're actually melting the outside of the Ganesh level, but it actually helps to stake the lab powder better. Okay. And that's our final truffle. And I'm shaking our truffle does coda in lattes. And I'll take it out gently with my hand. And here we go. We're down with making our truffles. Now we're down with making 03 type of travel is the one that's coda in cocoa powder. Coda in chocolate, then cocoa powder and coda in hazelnut powder. So I hope that you'll learn some good technique through watching the demonstration and then look forward to seeing creation of your own. Feel free to share your worth and ask any questions you have about the course. Thank you for watching and I'll see you next time.