Teuscher Boston: Walnut Truffle

Normally, I’m not a big fan of walnuts. Other nuts, like hazelnuts and almonds, appeal to me a lot more, especially in combination with chocolate. This would explain why I’d never sampled the Teuscher walnut truffle before. But folks, I need to provide a review of the full line of Teuscher truffles. You know, for completeness. So I sacrificed. For you, my readers.

I ate chocolate. For you.

What I ate featured a strong, smooth dark chocolate coating with a lingering aftertaste that was fruity and woody in nature.

It also featured a ganache that was robust enough to stand up to the crisp dark chocolate coating, which meant I could bite into the truffle without creating a crumbly mess. Nicely done. From a flavor perspective, the walnut is noticeable but not overpowering, and a little added sugar compliments the walnut, cream, and dark chocolate quite well. Even though I don’t like walnuts very much, I enjoyed the strong texture of the ganache and was pleased that the walnut flavor wasn’t overpowering. I’d consider topping off a box with this truffle in the future, even though it wouldn’t be one of my first selections because of personal preference. Walnut lovers, on the other hand, must try this truffle. Must.

Teuscher Boston: Jasmine Truffle

One truffle that caught my eye when I was selecting treats for my box at the Teuscher shop in Boston was the Jasmine truffle. Perhaps Teuscher had been carrying it for ages, but I’d certainly never tried it before. I was intrigued, and asked the chocolate consultant to pack one in the box for me.

If nothing else, a quick look reveals that this truffle features a coating of Teuscher dark chocolate with high quality cocoa butter.

The ganache inside is a little creamier and sweeter than the dark chocolate on the outside, but there is very little jasmine flavor noticeable. The ganache is perfectly smooth and delightful, but doesn’t seem to have any specific jasmine flavor. I enjoyed the truffle, but it seemed to not be much more than a dark chocolate ganache covered in dark chocolate. While there’s nothing wrong with that, I would rather just select a plain dark chocolate truffle if that is what I’m going to get. Next time, I’ll probably just pick out a plain dark chocolate truffle to enjoy.

Teuscher Boston: Dark Chocolate Caramel Truffle

As with the dark chocolate buttercrunch, a dark chocolate caramel truffle found its way into my box at the Boston Teuscher shop because I’d been impressed with the milk chocolate version in my assortment from Chicago.

Given that this truffle was from Teuscher, the outside featured that full-flavored, smooth dark chocolate that is the signature of the dark chocolate Teuscher creations. Intriguingly, it seemed to also have a bit of a vanilla undertone.

Inside, I found a silky smooth ganache that was also dark chocolate based, and was unfortunately just a bit too soft for the outer shell, which snapped away from the interior. Another disappointing aspect of the filling was that the caramel taste was not very apparent, as the dark chocolate flavor dominated the entire truffle. While the dark chocolate of the shell and the ganache was flavorful and high-quality, the caramel flavor was too subtle for this truffle to be much more than a simple high-quality dark chocolate truffle. In this case, I think I like the milk chocolate version better.

Teuscher Boston: Dark Chocolate Buttercrunch

One of the truffles that I enjoyed the most from my Teuscher Chicago haul was the milk chocolate buttercrunch. I liked it so much that I even tried to make something similar on my own. When I saw the dark chocolate buttercrunch available for sale at Teuscher Boston, I knew it belonged in my box.

On the outside, the thin layer of dark chocolate is smooth and not very sweet.

It’s good that it’s not very sweet, because it is right on top of a layer of sweet honeycomb buttercrunch, and inside of that buttercrunch layer is extra creamy, extra buttery soft chocolate ganache. I do believe that, if given the opportunity, I would bathe in this buttery chocolate ganache. At that point, I might, just might, be able to say I’d had enough of it. For a day or so. I believe that I actually like the dark chocolate buttercrunch more than the milk chocolate buttercrunch, as the smooth bittersweet chocolate on the outside offers some contrast to the super-sweet and interior. This may now be another standby for my Teuscher assortments.

Happy Halloween: Vegan(!) Pumpkin Truffles, Two Ways

If it isn’t completely obvious from the rest of this blog, I’m definitely not a vegan. I love milk chocolate. I use butter AND cream in my cupcake recipes. My chocolate mousse recipe involves cream and eggs. But some folks are vegan, and they deserve tasty chocolate treats as well, don’t they? Pumpkin truffles are a tasty treat, especially for Halloween, and as I contemplated different approaches, I realized that this was a perfect candidate for a vegan recipe. Thanks to some research and experimentation, I am pleased to present this Halloween treat: Vegan Pumpkin Truffles (two ways).

The first step is to make the ganache, which uses pumpkin puree as a base instead of cream to keep this creation vegan.

Ganache Ingredients

15 ounces canned pumpkin puree

½ cup brown sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoons nutmeg

½ teaspoon allspice

½ teaspoon ginger

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Pinch salt

12 ounces chopped vegan semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate

First, round up all the ingredients except the chocolate.

Next, combine these ingredients over low heat.

What you’re doing here is making pumpkin butter. While it isn’t difficult, it is time consuming, as you need to slowly reduce it to half its original volume by cooking off liquid without burning or hardening it. I suggest having a snack nearby so that you don’t eat all the pumpkin during the process.

After about 35-40 minutes of patiently stirring every few minutes, the pumpkin butter will be ready for ganache assembly.

Looks a little gross, no? Adding chocolate will help. In the interest of experimentation, I mixed half of the warm pumpkin butter with a bittersweet chocolate (Scharffen Berger 70% Cocoa Bittersweet).

After doing that, I mixed the other half of the warm pumpkin butter with a semisweet chocolate (El Rey Mijao 61% Cocoa).

I let each mixture cool for about an hour, and then rolled them into small balls for truffle-making.

The bittersweet ganache is on the left; the semisweet ganache is on the right. While they look pretty similar, the semisweet is much sweeter and softer than the bittersweet. Given the slightly lower cocoa percentage and the higher sugar percentage, this was completely logical, but presented me with a problem: I had this idea about moving away from a chocolate coverture and towards a powdered one. One using ingredients like these, plus some brown sugar:

The semi-sweet ganche simply wasn’t solid enough for this, so I started out by powder-covering the bittersweet ganache balls in a mix of 3 tablespoons of brown sugar, 2 tablespoons of unsweetened natural cocoa powder, ½ teaspoon of cinnamon and ½ teaspoon of nutmeg.

Beautiful! The powdered outside increased the intensity of the pumpkin flavor of the ganache inside.

To finish off the semisweet ganache balls, I melted some El Rey Gran Saman 70% cocoa chocolate and dipped away to arrive at this result.

More traditional truffles, with more chocolate flavor and just a little less spice.

I hereby declare both vegan pumpkin truffle creations a completely delicious success. And a completely delicious way for vegans to enjoy pumpkin AND chocolate.