I know I'm not always the best at keeping up with posts and things to share into the world. Sometimes I get busy with a side project. Sometimes those side projects are not food or anything major so I don't talk much about them. But sometime those side projects just have a bit of work and I don't have much to share about it until the end and a nice little look what I did, and that's what this kind of is.
First let's go back a few weeks ago. My sisters and I have a sibling group chat (any else?) and my sister Courtney brought up a chocolate shop we used to visit in San Francisco growing up, she couldn't remember the name. Brainstorming a bit and we remembered Coco Bella. This shop was really interesting because rather than one chocolatier they had a couple truffles from makers around the world. You then pick a box size and fill it with what you wanted. This was a nice treat my parents would get us when we did a day in the city. Stop by Coco Bella, get a family box and each of us get to choose a couple truffles to enjoy at home. Unfortunately they no longer are in business.
Courtney wanted some nice truffles as a treat and proceeded to look around but couldn't find a place like Coco Bella where you could pick the truffles in the box. Eventually she asked if I could do something like that. Now I haven't done chocolates in years. It's time consuming, and the ingredients are expensive, but I love it and would love to make some bonbons. One thing I needed was some good fruit puree and specifically the type I used in school that are concentrated and make bomb truffles. My sisters offered to split the cost of the purees with me so that I can then make some bonbons in exchange for some of what I make. Of course I was in.
This lead to me needing to step away. Like I said it's time consuming. I spent about 7-8 days total making these bonbons. From tempering, making fillings, temping some more, doing a couple slabs of ganache here or there, tempering again, dipping hundreds of cut ganache squares, and getting the best little boxes of 12 different flavored bonbons. If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen on my story the complete box, but here it is.
Let's talk about what I made. Staring like you're reading a box, left to right, top to bottom. First we have a lavender milk chocolate ganache dipped in white chocolate, passion fruit milk chocolate ganache dipped in dark chocolate, and a molded honey caramel in dark chocolate. Second row I made mango-chili-lime confit in a dark chocolate shell, Raspberry confit with a graham cracker crunch layer in white chocolate shell, and red currant confit with a vanilla cookie layer in dark chocolate. Third row is strawberry confit in dark chocolate shell, chai infused dark chocolate ganache dipped in dark chocolate, and a lemon poppy seed white chocolate ganache in a dark chocolate shell. Last row I made a passion fruit confit in a white chocolate shell, dark chocolate cherry ganache dipped in dark chocolate, and lastly my favorite truffle nicknamed chocolate crack is a peanut butter milk chocolate ganache with rice puffed cereal dipped in dark chocolate.
Doing these bonbons reminded me of some of the really fun and unique things I can make though. Part of me wants to say screw it and just make bonbons for the rest of my life. But I also realized I should start making these more. The most difficult part this time around was making 12 different flavors. If I limit myself to do 1-3 flavors it would be a lot more manageable. And at the same time, although not everyone has chocolate molds to make fancy AF ones, people have the few tools I use to make slabs of ganache that I then cut and dip and I think that would be something fun to teach, write about, work more on flavor wise, and maybe even do a video or two of some of them for people to learn in my digital program.
I had a lot of fun doing these truffles though. I feel a lot more confident in my tempering abilities. In total I tempered dark chocolate 5 times and white chocolate 3. I loved being able to make some really fancy and tasty bonbons. And it was just fun even if it was a lot of work. So enjoy the view, if you even want some reach out and maybe I'll do a give away, and now that this job is over this means more baking and recipe experimenting.
- Harry