Caol Ila Truffles

[pokershaman]

You've seen this advertisement, haven't you? Two people are walking towards each other on the sidewalk, each one focused on the tasty treat they are savoring. They collide, and their treats break and spill onto one another.

"Hey! You got chocolate in my Islay single-malt scotch whisky!"

"You got single-malt scotch all over my organic artisan chocolate."

Tentatively, they both taste the result, and their faces explode in orgasmic ecstasy.

I was curious whether my 12-year-old Caol Ila single-malt would work as a chocolate truffle flavoring. I have a small collection of single-malts, and thought that the 10-year Macallan and the 12-year Balvenie were not interesting enough, and the 10-year Laphroig, much though I like it, was too rough. But I thought that the Caol Ila had possibility; when I first tasted it I described it to a friend as "peat candy."

So when I was looking for something to do for my next trufflemaking project, I had Caol Ila truffles in mind. They were to be shell-molded truffles, the filling placed while still warm into a chocolate shell formed inside a polycarbonate mold. Then the a chocolate layer would be poured over the filling to seal it in, and the resulting truffle would be removed from the mold after it had cooled sufficiently.

For the outer shell I chose to use 73% cacao Dagoba Chocodrops, available at my local grocery store. I melted and tempered it in the traditional of tabling a portion on my stone slab and mixing it in with the rest. I filled and drained the molds, and set them to cool. Then I made the ganache filling, using a recipe cribbed from Chocolates & Confections by Peter B. Greweling:

Heavy cream	120 g
Light corn syrup	33 g
12-year Caol Ila whisky	50 g
Butter, unsalted, very soft	40 g
Dark chocolate, melted, kept at 90˚F	280 g

The chocolate I used here was another Dagoba organic chocolate, their 59% cacao Semisweet Baking Chocolate.

Mix the cream and the corn syrup in a saucepan, and bring it briefly to a boil. Remove it from the heat; add the whisky. Allow to cool to 105˚F.

Add the butter in pieces to the molten chocolate, and massage it in, making sure that no lumps of butter remain.

Pour the cream mixture over the chocolate. Using a small rubber spatula stir the chocolate in small circles to emulsify it; continue until the ganache is smooth.

I planned to fill the shells by piping the ganache through a pastry funnel, but it was too thin for me to do so, probably because the proportion of liquor was 50% higher than that of the recipe from which I cribbed this. Instead, I spooned the ganache into the shells.

After putting the filled shells aside for an hour to set, I reheated and retempered the chocolate for coating, and spread it over the ganache in the molds. Then I let the finished truffles cool overnight, and dropped them out of the molds in the morning.



The result tastes spectacularly good. 12-year Caol Ila whisky and dark chocolate taste even better together than I could possibly have imagined.

I wound up having more ganache than I needed for the molds at hand, so I lined a 9" square baking pan with parchment paper and poured the remaining ganache onto the paper. When it set sufficiently, I removed the paper from the pan and spread a layer of chocolate across the top. The next day, I used a pizza cutter to cut the coated ganache into squares, and dipped these squares into melted and tempered chocolate coating. The resulting handmade truffles came out rather more funky than the shell-molded truffles; and I also had trouble with controlling the temperature of the chocolate, resulting in considerable fat-bloom on the handmade truffles.



Note: Handling chocolate is not for beginners, but a skill that must be learned. I wouldn't recommend wasting either scotch or chocolate of this quality by making these truffles as a first chocolate project. Learn how to temper and mold chocolate first.

Comments

[xenacryst]

Oh, *GUH*! I'm not the person to make this, having never done chocolate confections before, but if I ever get any of my chocolatier friends to make some, I'll be all over it. I'd be tempted to try it with a Callebeaut chocolate, myself.

[monanotlisa]

Thanks for this - and the disclaimer! I feel tempted, but I have never made chocolates myself.

Memorised.

[hugh_mannity]

Interesting. I'm not a chocolatier, yet, but I do have one question -- what could one use as a substitute for the corn syrup. I have a "digestive sensitivity" to corn in almost any form.

[brigid]

I wonder if a simple syrup would work?

I have the same question, as a friend of mine is allergic to corn, and I like to make cookies and candy for people as gifts.

[pokershaman]

The easiest substitute for corn syrup for Americans to find is honey. Another good substitute is cane syrup, but this may not be readily available in stores in many areas.

Either can replace corn syrup on a 1:1 basis.

[pokershaman]

Simple syrup simply will not work; that's just a solution of sucrose, and will do nothing to prevent sucrose crystallization. What's needed is a syrup with a substantial fraction of glucose. A "simple" syrup made with invert sugar rather than ordinary sucrose would do the job. (But check the source of the invert sugar, to make sure that it isn't derived from corn!)

Or use honey or cane syrup, as mentioned below.