Sunday, May 2, 2010

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Peanut Butter Truffles


A baking recipe with 5 ingredients is generally not my friend. The fewer the ingredients, the more skill and finesse needed to execute the recipe. For example....pie dough or meringues. And now I can add truffles to the list. This week was most definitely an exercise in patience for me. And my sister. She was staying with us for a few days this week and helped me take on this week's Sweet Melissa Sundays recipe for Peanut Butter Truffles.

Our first go round on Thursday night was unsuccessful. Best I can figure is the cream reached a boiling point. The cream and peanut butter mixture was quite thick. When it met up with the chopped up chocolate the result was a textured looking sludge. Hmmmm. Not good. Here's what it's NOT supposed to look like:


Off to the grocery store again the next day to pick up more chocolate and more heavy cream. I decided to use semisweet for the second round because the bittersweet called for in the recipe seemed too dark.

Friday night we went for round 2. We decided to make a few modifications. First, we chopped up the chocolate in smaller pieces. Then we melted the peanut butter in the microwave first, rather than heating it up with the cream. (Upon suggestions from other SMS bakers about these truffles not being peanut buttery enough...we used 1/2 cup instead of 1/4...and it turned out to be just the right amount of peanut butter goodness). And lastly we watched the cream like a hawk as it came up to temperature to ensure it did not reach the boiling point. Just as tiny bubbles were forming around the edges I added in the melted peanut butter and it combined together much easier than round 1 and the end result was more liquidy. We poured this over the chopped chocolate and let it sit for 5 minutes. Whisk, whisk...add a little butter, another whisk or two....and voila! A nice silky chocolate truffle base. Thank God! I don't think I could have handled round 3!


We decided to mix it up and bit and we added rice crispy cereal to half the truffle base. I had visions of a crunchy crispy peanut butter truffle. It looked great. But the crispies lost all their crunch by the time we rolled out the truffles. Not sure how to keep the crispies crisp. I did a little web browsing on the subject, but didn't see much to help solve this problem. Any ideas fellow SMS bakers?



Luckily we still had half the mixture untouched by experimentation...this turned out to be plenty of truffles. We made the full recipe and it yielded 6 dozen truffles in total. Though the (not so) crispy ones were edible, I was happy to have the regular ones to fall back on.


On to the fun part...the truffle coating. Originally I was going to skip the chopped up peanut coating recommended in the recipe. But at the last moment I picked up some honey roasted peanuts on one of our many trips to the grocery store. We decided one coating option just would not do. So we opted for 4....cocoa powder, powdered sugar, chopped up peanuts and dark chocolate shavings.

I loved Hanaa's idea of chocolate shavings! I meticulously chopped up a semisweet bar....but unfortunately there was a little mishap with the shavings. We stored the bowl of shavings in the freezer while we waited for the truffles to be rolled out. When I went to pull the bowl out of the freezer it flew right out of my hand and chocolate dust went flying everywhere. Sigh. Then we couldn't help ourselves and my sister and I burst into laughter. The scene was very comical! I should have taken a picture! After the multiple step clean up effort (which included removing a drawer from my freezer, a broom, papertowels and clorox wipes), we jumped in the car at 9:30 pm and headed to the grocery store....yet again! But I was determined to have chocolate shavings.


After all that....guess which topping turned out to be our favorite? The chopped up peanuts! They added that extra sweet (from the honey roasted), salty peanutty zip to the truffles. And visually I thought they looked the best....really bringing home the concept of what flavor you would be biting into.


The powdered sugar didn't really work for us so we only did a few. The cocoa powder was nice and the chocolate shavings were good too and had a great texture. It was fun trying different options! Next time I might try milk chocolate shavings mixed with chopped nuts to capture a peanut butter cup taste.

Showing off our final product! Thanks for the help this week sis. I had a blast!



This recipe is a keeper! Thanks to Mara for selecting these tasty treats this week. For the recipe check out Mara's site, Love Your Mother Earth. And see what other SMS bakers did
here.

19 comments:

  1. Love the pictures..very nice! Your truffles turned out so good!

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  2. Great post! I admire your persistence. The truffles look great and the photos are fantastic!

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  3. Beautiful! Love your presentation!

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  4. Oh, I just love the presentation! They look sooo good, I like how you tried so many different toppings. I'm glad you gave the recipe a 2nd try. Thanks for baking this week!

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  5. I loved reading this post... I am glad all the trials and errors are over and now I have dozens of delicious truffles to enjoy!

    I have some funny information for you. Luis' favorite topping is the cocoa powder and the powdered sugar turned out to be Annette's favorite... in her words "orgasmic!"

    Despite you sending me home with DOZENS of truffles I only have 12 left ahah.

    I should also add that I warned Luis about the not-so-crispy crispy ones... unknowing he grabbed one of them first and gobbled it down. They he grabbed the regular truffle box and said "so these must be the bad ones then." I couldn't stop laughing. He was shocked when I told him the one he had eaten was the not-so-crispy crispy.


    Well I have rambled on for much too long I just want you to know I had a lot of fun helping you with your SMS this week and I am going to go eat another truffle!

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  6. Thanks K! Glad to hear the feedback from Luis and Annette. Guess everyone likes something a little different. :) Can never too many options! Thanks again for all your help. I had a blast making them with you. And now, I'm going to eat a truffle too. ;)

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  7. Your truffles look terrific and it sounds like you and your sister had a lot of fun coating them in the different toppings.

    Semisweet was definitely a great call for round two, as were the honey roasted peanuts to up the sweetness a bit. I had good luck with this recipe, but candy can be so fussy. When the group made toffee last year, I ended up making it three times.

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  8. Hi Gloria!

    Thanks so much for stopping by and your super sweet comment- I'm so glad to meet you, and look forward to staying in touch each week with SMS!

    Your truffle post put a big smile on my face this morning- you're a great story teller, and I truly admire your perseverance. You never gave up, and were rewarded with some delicious truffles- they look fantastic! I'm not sure how to make the rice krispies stay crunchy, but I think part of the problem is getting them "wet" by stirring them into the melted chocolate mixture. Maybe if you used them as an outer coating? And serve/eat shortly thereafter? I don't know if this would make a difference, but you could try toasting them a while to dry them out even more, as well. If you figure it out, please let me know, because I think it would make a great combo!

    Have a great start to your week and I hope to hear from you again soon!

    Fondly,
    Joy
    http://hotovenwarmheart.wordpress.com/

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  9. Gosh, we should have an award for the baker who went the extra mile because you would definitely win it! I can't get over how much effort you went through to get your beautiful truffles to be just perfect!

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  10. This was surely a labor of love, and a wonderful story to boot. I like your idea of milk chocolate shavings/chopped peanut coating and will try that out when I make the recipe.

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  11. You did GREAT! What a crazy time to get these to work but the end photos are amazing! LOVE them!

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  12. Oh no! I love the story, but it sucks that sometimes things just don't work out, but starting over is great! Most of the time, I just stick with it...and it turn out...some of those times.

    LOVE the presentation and different toppings!

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  13. Great post and photos! Amazing truffles.

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  14. Your truffles turned out just beautiful and I love the way you displayed them! The rectangular dish really makes the presentation look extra special.

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  15. I'm impressed with your determination to make them! I may have just called it quits sometime in there :-)

    Your dish displays the truffles perfectly. They look great!

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  16. They look great! I love the addition of rice krispies :)

    Katie xox

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  17. Those look great! If I had done the peanut coating, I'm sure that would have been my favorite too

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  18. I am impressed with you determination!! :)

    Nicely written post and great photos!

    Carmen

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  19. Wow, kudos to you for persisting and winding up with such lovely truffles :) They are perfection! I love your idea to add the rice krispies to the recipe, too bad it didn't work out because I think it would have been so delicious!

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