A chocolate truffle-making workshop in downtown Boston

I was lucky enough to be invited to a Taste of Chocolate workshop at Elephant & Castle last Saturday, and was pleased to find that the instructor was none other than Valerie Conyngham of Vianne Chocolat (about whom, incidentally, a friend of mine recently wrote a great profile in Edible Boston).

Valerie introduced us to cocoa beans (left) as well as cocoa butter (right), which is often sold by chocolate makers for use in cosmetic products. Some chocolate makers (Hershey's, for instance) replace some of the cocoa butter in their chocolate with vegetable oil, which gives the chocolate a waxy flavor (watch out for this in the list of ingredients when shopping for chocolate).

Valerie showed us an 11 lb. bar of chocolate that used to be the only way chocolate was sold--now it comes in handy chips and disks for chocolate makers.

She demonstrated the process for making chocolate ganache and flavoring it with Chai tea. When making a flavored ganache, you can infuse the heavy cream with a flavor (as she did with the tea) or add the flavor later (as you might do with raspberry jam, for instance). When I asked about the most challenging flavor to get into a ganache, she said that for her it was stout beer. 

Though we didn't have a chance to try it ourselves, Valerie spoke about tempering chocolate, a tricky process that requires raising and lowering the temperature of melted chocolate in order to give it that glossy appearance and satisfying snap of chocolate candy you find at a chocolatier. David Lebovitz offers some good information and instructions on tempering here.

Then each student in the workshop received a tray that contained three kinds of ganache--burnt caramel, raspberry, and milk chocolate--and could choose how to assemble the truffles and whether to coat them in tempered chocolate or roll in toppings like ground almonds, toasted coconut, or cocoa powder. The chocolate we used was Callebaut.

The final step in our process was packaging our candies--setting them on gold pads inside little candy boxes and tying them up with ribbon. I took home three boxes of truffles, quite enough for after-dinner treats and sharing with friends.