I am going to share with you in this post a really quick and easy chocolate truffle cups that are perfect as gifts or simply to indulge. You will however, need to be able to temper some chocolate to mould chocolate cups for the preparation or alternatively roll them in to a ball and dip them in tempered coverture chocolate. Scroll down to the end of this post for directions to how to temper chocolate.
RECIPE
Makes 25 x mini chocolate cups
Cinnamon Milk Chocolate Ganache
100 g Thickened cream 35% Fat
2 g Cinnamon Powder
20 g Glucose Syrup
175 g Milk Coverture Chocolate 32.6% Cacao
2 g Vanilla Bean Paste
Qs Callebaut Dark chocolate Crispearls
Method
To make the chocolate cups, temper some coverture dark chocolate and mould them with a chocolate polycarbonate mould.
For the Ganache, combine the heavy cream with the glucose, Cinnamon and Vanilla bean paste in a small saucepan and bring to a mere boil over high heat to around 80°C - 85°C.
Pour the hot cream onto the Milk Coverture Chocolate or any Coverture chocolate with similar Cacao Content and allow to sit for one minute.
Emulsify with the help of a hand blender. Transfer the ganache into a clean bowl.
Cover the ganache with cling film touching the surface of the ganache. Leave to crystalize overnight or until it reach a pipeable consistency.
Transfer the ganache into a piping bag fitted with a star nozzle and pipe in to the pre prepared chocolate cups.
Chocolate Tempering Quick Tips
To temper dark chocolate, ensure that you are using Coverture chocolate that only has pure cocoa butter as fat.
Start by melting down the chocolate in a microwave in a short 2 to 3 minutes burst until they are fully melted and reaches 45 degrees celsius.
Once the chocolate have reached above 45°C, start by placing two big handful of the non melted chocolate chips (all coverture chocolate in chips that comes in a bag are already tempered, so you are using these chips that have stable cocoa butter crystals in them to bring the melted chocolate that you have melted and gotten rid of the stable crystals back to temper)
Stir the chocolate chips in the melted chocolate and observe how fast the chocolate chips are melting. If the chocolate chips looks like it is fully melted in the first 2 minutes of stirring and the chocolate is above 33 degrees, you will need to add another handful of chocolate chips. Keep stirring until the chocolate comes down to 31-32°C. If your chocolate reaches the tempered temperature at 31-32°C and have some tiny bits of the non melted chocolate chip, heat the chocolate slightly with a hair dryer. Be careful to maintain the tempered temperature of the chocolate and not go over 32°C . So the best thing to do is to give it a small burst of heat, stir, check the temperature and repeat the process when necessary until the chocolate is at 31- 32°C and there are no lumps of chocolate bits present. Do a test by dipping the edge of a pairing knife or plastic scraper in to the chocolate then tap off the excess. Leave the test chocolate at room temperature. The chocolate should start to set in within 4 to 6 minutes. Ensure that your room temperature is not too hot and should be around 14 -20°C at a 50% relative humidity. If your room temperature is too warm, you may need to do the tempering process on a cooler day.
Note: To heat the chocolate, you can use a heat gun that can be bought at hardware stores or simply use a hairdryer on low (you don't want to blow the chocolate all over your kitchen!)
