In The Kitchen - Truffles

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Hi. I am Gwen Schoen. Food Writer at the Sacramento Bee and today in the kitchen, we are going to be making dark caramel Fleur De Sel Truffles for Valentines Day.

We are going to start with making the filling which is done by combining a melted chocolate and we are going to use bitter sweet chocolate today but you could use semi sweet. And, we are going to make a very thin caramel based add to the chocolate and once that is finish, we will chill it and then we will go ahead and roll the truffles into pretty shapes for valentines.

Start by placing chunks of semi sweet or bitter sweet chocolate in the metal bowl over simmering water. And we you put your pan over the water, you want to make sure that it is not resting in the water otherwise the chocolate will scorch.

So we are going to start, this is nice and melted and once that is nice and melted, we are going to make the caramel base that we are going to add to the chocolate to make the filling for the truffles.

So while that sitting there, staying nice and melty, we are going to start making the caramel, and we are making that with a third cup of sugar and two tablespoons of water. We are going to bring that to a boil and let it boil for about four minutes until it turns nice and dark golden. And once it start to -- the sugar crystals start to melt, you want to take a wet pastry brush and wash down the sides of the pan so that there are not any sugar crystals left on the sides of the pan because that will cause your caramel to be grainy.

So once it starts to boil, we will stop stirring and just let it cook until it turns dark golden amber color.

Now, you can see this has turned into nice golden amber color. We are going to pour in two thirds cup of heavy whipping cream and it is going to bubble and it will steam quite a bit. It suppose to do that but it is a kind of a surprise for people who have never made caramel before, and turn off the heat and stir it until it gets nice and creamy and the bubbles disappear.

Now, you got a beautiful caramel color and it is very thin, this is a thin caramel. But what we are going to do is add it to the melted chocolate and keep stirring until it gets all nicely blended in and it gets very creamy.

Then, all we have to do is refrigerate it until it sets up nice and firm and we will have the center sel made for the truffles.

Now, the dark chocolate caramel filling is been in the refrigerator for about three hours so it has turned nice and firmed and the next step of making the truffle is to make the centers. What we are going to do is take about a tablespoon of filling, roll it in the bowl and then roll it in coco, unsweetened coco powder.

And then once we have that with all of the filling, we will dip that in another layer of chocolate.

So, we chilled our coco covered balls of filling and then refrigerate it for several hours until they were nice and cold and the next step is to dip the truffles in melted chocolate. And just for an interesting combination of flavors, I am using semi sweet for the coating and I used bitter sweet for the centers.

So all you do is take that coco covering to the center, drop it into the chocolate, rolled it around a little bit with two forks, and then flip the fork on the side of the bowl a couple of times to knock off the extra chocolate, put it back on to your wax paper, and you can make a decorative top to it.

Then after you have dip a few of your chocolates while they are still pretty wet, sprinkle a little bit of course ground sea salt on the top and that is what it make a Fleur De Sel Chocolate Truffles.

After dipping the truffles in the melted chocolate, put the plate in the refrigerator and let them sit in there and chill until they get nice and firm, and then you can put them into old decorative paper cups and they are ready to serve, or you can put them in pan little valentine boxes and give them away as valentine gifts.

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