Here is the recipe for the promised truffles I nibbled last week together with the marvelous mulled Rioja wine. To be honest, these truffles are the 3rd batch I made in the last week and so there’s been an intense smell of chocolate at home lately.

By chocolate I mean mostly the real-real chocolate, with at least 60% cocoa (or more), and definitely not the sugarly milky versions – those are quite an offense to chocolate. (Sorry, Juanpi!)

I had never made chocolate truffles before because it’s not something too popular here in Slovenia, at least not among people I know. Actually, I don’t really know what sweets do Slovenes eat around Christmas time. In my family we have always baked -guess what- potica and some batches of simple cookies. That’s all. No fuss, no special bakery.

Having spent Christmas time in Spain twice in row, I’ve been amazed by the quantity of sweets these people consume. I mean, sweet is a mild word to describe it. There you can buy hundreds of types and flavours of turrón, polvorón and mazapán, to name only the most important ones. It made my stomach upset every time, but at the same time it made me think how happy the Spanish guys must be to have something so adorable and traditional on the table for the end of the year.
Another thing I envy them for, is the lenghth of Christmas festivities, which start on 22nd of December (national lottery) and lasts till 6th of January. Now THAT is what I call a feast.

Not to get too swept away from my initial intention, the recipe for little chocolate balls with a noble name, aka truffles, is enormously simple. I guess I won’t be ever able to afford those real ones (truffles, namely) – unless I win the lottery – and at least I am left with these round shaped chocolate delights which -by the way- make a beautiful Christmas present as well. The best part of these truffles is the fact, you can use your own imagination and combine the additional ingredients according to your liking. The only thing you need to follow, is to melt the chocolate and stir in the heavy cream, after that it is your choice, what to do.

Here is how I did last night:

I started by peeling the orange rind, cutting it in tiny pieces, trying to remove as much of the white part as possible

The next step is to soak the cut orange rind into Cointreau, the orange liquor, for at least 20 minutes.

I used a Swiss made dark chocolate with 72% cocoa. Last week I combined 75% and 55% cocoa one;
that mixture I recommend to those not so fond of bitter chocolate.

First I boiled the heavy cream (100ml) and set it aside. Then I melted the chocolate (200gr) over a double boiler (al baño maria in Spanish) with an addition of a tablespoon of water.

Once the chocolate melted, I added the heavy cream, stiring gently and then I let it rest for some minutes away from the fire.
Some people add also some butter – I found that unnecessary as there is already enough fat present. At the end mix in the soaked up orange rind.

Now we got a chocolate ganache. First let it cool to the room temperature, then transfer it to the fridge where it should spend the night resting.

And this is what I did today: shaping truffles with the help of a teaspoon,  dipping some of them into cocoa powder and some into the mixture of grated coconut and tarragon scented ground sugar. Of course, you can be more creative and coat them for example with crushed nuts, pistacchios or even roll in coffee powder. I like mine this way very much. After shaping them, I store them in an airtight container in the fridge.

Gorgeous!