Over the summer four 100g bars of 70% dark chocolate in my office over-heated and bloomed. Bloomed chocolate looks weird and has an unpleasant texture but it is not dangerous – it just needs to be melted and reworked.
I have developed a special truffle recipe to use up surplus or bloomed chocolate. It involves forming a water ganache and then chilling to give luscious smooth and creamy (but dairy free) intensely chocolatey truffles.
Ingredients
- Surplus or bloomed dark chocolate – I used 70% but you can go higher if you wish
- Icing sugar
- Water from a kettle that has just boiled
- Spiced rum / Toffee vodka / Brandy /Kahlua (optional)
- Vanilla extract (optional)
- Cocoa powder for dusting
Method
- Completely melt the chocolate in a bain-marie or in a bowl over a saucepan of boiled water
- Add icing sugar through a sieve until you have the level of sweetness you desire. Stir but don’t worry if you can see clumps of sugar, they will go in the next step
- If you are adding booze and / or vanilla do it now.
- At the first hint of moisture the molten chocolate will seize up and look terrible – do not worry
- Add a dessert spoon of hot water. Stir.
- Repeat adding hot water until you finally you have a glossy paste that is thick but still stirrable
- Transfer to fridge and watch like a hawk until the paste is partially set but still malleable
- Using two teaspoons form into an (aprox) 10g portion which you can roll between your hands to make a ball – each one should be about the size of a large Malteser
- Repeat until you have used up all the paste – each 100g bar should produce around 15 truffles
- Return truffles to the fridge until completelv set
- Roll in cocoa powder to coat
- Serve!
NB Because they are water-based the truffles do not have a lengthy shelf-life but they freeze well. Put the uncoated truffles on a baking tray and freeze, then transfer the frozen truffles to a sealed container. Defrost before use and dust with cocoa powder as above.