Ingredients:
Truffle:
8 ounces (about 3 cups) Madeira cake crumbs, or any white or yellow cake, with the outside crust edges removed
3 tablespoons whipping (heavy) cream
White Chocolate Coating:
6 ounces white chocolate
1 tablespoon shortening (optional, not used if tempering chocolate)
Garnish (optional):
Gold Leaf
Gold Disco Dust
Directions:
- Line a large baking sheet or jelly roll pan with parchment paper or wax paper.
Truffle:
- In a large mixing bowl, combine cake crumbs and candied orange peel.
- Heat the apricot jam in a small saucepan over low heat or in the microwave for 10 to 20 seconds. Add warmed apricot jam, whipping cream and melted white chocolate to cake mixture. Mix with a rubber spatula, wooden spoon, or your hands to thoroughly combine ingredients. Tip: See Melting Chocolate – How to Melt Chocolate.
- Shape mixture into small balls, using about 2 teaspoons of mixture for each ball. Tip: A small ice cream scoop is ideal for making uniform-sized candies.
- The balls will be moist and sticky until they sit and dry out a bit. Cover the cake balls and refrigerate until well chilled, 1 to 2 hours or overnight to firm up and loose some of their stickiness.
White Chocolate Coating:
Note: It is always preferable to temper chocolate when the chocolate is used for dipping candies. In place of step 6 below, See Tempering Chocolate – How to Temper Chocolatefor information about how to temper the chocolate to be used for dipping these candies.
If you don’t want to go through the steps of tempering the chocolate, the following directions are for melting chocolate (not tempering.) See Melting Chocolate – How to Melt Chocolate for additional information about melting chocolate.
- In top of a double boiler over hot water, melt chocolate. Stir in the shortening. Set aside to cool.
Tip: Create a double boiler by filling a saucepan with 2 inches of water and bringing it to a simmer. Turn the heat off and place a stainless steel, ceramic, or glass bowl on top of the hot water, the upper pan should not touch the water.
- Place the cooled bowl of chocolate over a pan of hot water to keep the chocolate a liquid consistency for dipping.
Dipping and Garnish:
- Place one truffle at a time in the chocolate, gently turn it over with a fork or candy dipping fork. Use the fork to lift the truffle out of the chocolate and tap the fork on the rim of the bowl to allow excess chocolate to drip back into the pan, and then draw the underside of the fork over the rim of the pan to remove any drips of chocolate. Gently place the chocolate coated truffles on the prepared baking pan, pushing the truffle off the fork with another fork. Let truffles sit until the chocolate is dry and firm. Tip: refrigerate chocolate coated truffles about 30 minutes for the chocolate to become firm.However, if the chocolate has been tempered the balls do not need to be refrigerated as the chocolate should set quickly.
Garnish (optional):
- Place small bits of gold leaf on the top of each truffle, and then sprinkle with gold disco dust. The gold leaf is very delicate and needs to be applied carefully, in a room with no drafts. Place the truffles on a work surface close-by to the gold leaf. Touch the tip of a small artist paintbrush to a corner of the gold leaf and lift a small piece of piece of gold leaf onto each truffle. Use a second paintbrush if necessary to push the gold leaf off the first paintbrush. Don’t worry if the gold leaf tears, just place it randomly on top of the truffles, and smooth it down with the paintbrush. Static will cause the gold leaf to adhere to the paintbrush bristles. Try not to breathe on the gold leaf before it is on the truffles, it will blow away into the air.
- Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator up to 1 week. Makes about 38 truffles.
TheBakingPan.com
Adapted From: Crazy for Chocolate, Bay Books, Australia, 2008
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