The Chocolate Master

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Peter loves his chocolate tempering machine.

We now have so many kind types of truffles, dipped candies, and nut barks in the house, there’s no possible way even I could eat them all. Not that I’m complaining.

Whipping ganache prior to rolling out truffle centers.

Initially, Peter had difficulty dipping truffle centers because the tempered chocolate was too stiff. We even snuck into one of the stores of the well-known chocolate chain from which we bought the Little Dipper to casually watch their machine at work. It was not my proudest moment.

After some research, Peter declared we needed cocoa butter to make the chocolate runnier.

Now, when I hear the words “cocoa butter”, I think of the skin-soothing ingredient in rich hand creams. I don’t think of this:

These rough white chunks are raw cocoa butter. Besides the fact that they look like enormous blocks of white sidewalk chalk, I had a hard time imagining how they would make melted chocolate more … melty.

But it worked great! Just a small bit of cocoa butter made the tempered chocolate infinitely more dippable. A few scenes from the latest chocolate-making session:

Ganache centers.
Dip away!

In this batch, Peter made passionfruit- and lavender-flavored truffles.

I asked him what the designs on the top represented. He replied, “The ‘P’ is for passionfruit.”

And so I asked the natural follow-up question: “What’s the double-S for?” Peter: “I thought the design looked cool. Those are the lavender ones.”

Of course. That makes perfect logical sense.

I dipped a few marshmallows in the remainder of the tempered chocolate, then mixed chocolate with both sweetened coconut and toasted almonds to make bark.

Mashmallow, covered in perfectly tempered chocolate.
From left: haystack (chocolate covered coconut), almond bark.

I think I’m becoming reconciled to this 45-pound single purpose kitchen appliance.

Q: What’s your favorite way to eat chocolate?

8 Comments

  1. Ahhh I want that machine (and learn how to use it) now! These chocolates look fantastic! Well done Peter 🙂

    I know how to make ganache, and I normally use it to ice a very easy chocolate cake that i normally make for my birthday. I’m not a huge fan of chocolate, but when I crave it I have to have it. And now I’m at work and I crave these fantastically chocolate covered truffles. 😛

  2. Wow, Jessie! You can open up your very own gourmet chocolate shop! Everything looks so scrumptious, I wish I could taste it through the screen haha 😉

  3. I am seriously jealous of Peter’s chocolate-making skills! And now I’m thinking of getting that appliance, lol! The truffles are so pretty (love the P and the S), but I’d probably have to start off making bark, lol…I try, but tempered chocolate doesn’t like me. 🙂

    1. I know what you mean! I’ve never tempered chocolate successfully without the Little Dipper – probably because I’m too impatient 😉

  4. You guys are going to be official chocolatier’s before you know it!

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