High tea: Rosemary & bay truffles

So, for a while now I've wanted to do an afternoon tea - a high tea. (Which is what we call a fancy afternoon tea. Which isn't actually the correct British definition as I understand it, but anyway..)

I have a thing for high tea. All those pretty dishes, and delicious delicate things...  Fortunately, I am far from alone in this love. So, a dear friend of mine offered to host the venue, while I brought the food.

There were, of course a few Heston dishes to add to the list for me to talk about. I'll do one per post, keep it easy for people reading. (And yes, there was a lot of Nigella love going on. She does ace the baking thing.)

We had: (origin of dishes marked in brackets)

• Scones (Nigella Lawson - How to be a Domestic Goddess)
• plain with strawberry jam and cream
• cheese and chive with butter
• Sandwiches (None. They are sandwiches. I don't need no recipe for sandwiches.)
• cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches
• honey baked ham and Swiss cheese sandwiches
• Cupcakes (Nigella Lawson - How to be a Domestic Goddess)
• Chocolate Cherry
• Carrot with cream cheese frosting
• Fruit mince pies (Nigella Lawson - How to be a Domestic Goddess)
• Coconut Maccaroons (Nigella Lawson - How to be a Domestic Goddess)
• Madeleines (Stephanie Alexander - Cook's Companion, 2ed.)  with chocolate sauce (Heston Blumenthal - Heston Blumenthal at Home.)
• Florentines - (Heston Blumenthal - Heston Blumenthal at Home.) 
• Rosemary and bay truffles (Heston Blumenthal - Heston Blumenthal at Home.) 
• Passionfruit Pastilles (Heston Blumenthal - Heston Blumenthal at Home.)

Today we're talking...

Rosemary and bay truffles

Heston Blumenthal at Home

I've made a variant of these before. And they were nice, but I really wanted to try the rosemary and bay truffles. Such a savoury flavours as a sweet? It's classic Heston. I also made the crispy chocolate coating this time. Yum.

Process:

1. Warm the milk and flavours.
2. Melt the chocolate separately
3. Mix together
4. Chill
5. Make the crystallised chocolate coating
6.  Roll chocolate into balls and then in coating

I decided to do a half batch, as I recall it making quite a lot, and I was worried it would be awful, and didn't want to have a whole bunch of chocolates no one would eat.

Step 1: Warm the milk in flavours. 

For this one, its rosemary and thyme. Warm it up, and let it infuse for a while.

Then strain out the bay and rosemary.

Step 2: Melt the chocolate

As I've mentioned before, I do this in the microwave..

Step 3: Mix together

I used double cream, rather than whipping cream. This was a mistake, because it was too high on the fat content, meaning it separated (just a little).

Step 4: Chill. 

Pour it into your prepared tin.

Step 5: Make the Crispy Chocolate topping. 

I recognised this as a similar thing to some of the chocolate dirt from the Tiramisu flowerpots.Version one and two.

Heat up water and sugar ...

Until it hits 135 degrees, or starts to colour slightly on the edges. I went for the latter because it was a lot easier than juggling a thermometer. (Basically you're using a similar technique to making wet caramel).

Add some chopped chocolate...

And whisk like crazy..

It turns to powdery lumps. Totally freakish and not what you expect from chocolate. I recommend getting a spoon and squishing some of the larger lumps to make it more powdery and better suited to rolling into balls.

Step 6: Roll into balls and then into coating.

You can see below some the fat has separated out. Sigh. I scraped it off before rolling it into balls.

I found the large sized melon scoop was perfect truffle size.

I don't have any pictures of that. What can I say, it was really messy and my usual photographer was excitedly helping roll balls of ganache in chocolate crystals.

I also managed to not take a photo of them after making them. You can see them on the top tier, with the lighter coloured coating.

Things I learned from this recipe:

• Use the right cream asked for in the recipe. If double cream was better, it would have asked for it.

Verdict:

They were tasty! Unexpectedly so. The rosemary was definitely noticeable, but not in anyway unpleasant. Just... different.

Guest opinions:

Well received. Apart from husband who feels rosemary has no place in chocolate. Otherwise generally enjoyed, especially by the other member of our household, who ate four.


Next: Chocolate sauce for Madeleines.

Heston Blumenthals's Chocolate Truffles

So this is a lazy, getting-back-into-it post. Home life has been a tad busy, so not a lot of dinner-partying going on.

But then I had a birthday to go to - an excellent day to make something.

I went easy on myself, and selected Heston's Chocolate Truffles recipe.

You can see a copy of it here, on the SBS website. It's also found (in a flavoured version) in
Heston at Home. He also makes them on the associated How to Cook Like Heston TV show.

Really, they are dreadfully easy. Make ganache. Roll it into balls and coat in something. See? Two steps. Painfully straightforward. 

But the real question is... does it live up to the promise?

Steps:

1. Heat up the cream and melt chocolate (separately)
2. Mix together
3. Chill
4. Roll into balls, roll balls in chosen outer layer.

I decided to do two flavours - one, the as-written salted dark chocolate and a straight milk chocolate version. I was tempted by the rosemary and bay flavoured ones in the book, but as these were a gift and for a party, I decided to play safe. Or so I thought.

Here is everything for both the milk chocolate/hazelnut meal version and the dark chocolate/cocoa rolled versions.

Heat up the cream

So I was doing the one from the website, so no extra flavouring or infusion necessary.

 

The heated cream has a teaspoon of salt added. (I omitted this for the milk chocolate version)

 Melt the chocolate

Admission: I melt my chocolate in the microwave in 30 second increments, stirring each 30 seconds. Easy, quick and I've never had it seize due to steam (unlike the water bowl method).  (If you're curious - 300g? around 1:30 or so.)

 Mix the cream into the melted chocolate in batches.

 Okay, all ready to go into the lined container. My lasagne pan was near-perfect size.

 Then I repeated that for the milk chocolate minus the salt.

Then they sit on the bench to cool down. Then into the fridge (in my case overnight - its four hours on the bench then six in the fridge, in theory).

 Okay, all chilled. This is the dark chocolate - it was too hard to work straight from the fridge, so I left it to warm up a little.

 And did the milk chocolate instead. This was noticeably softer. I think I would probably drop the amount of cream in a milk chocolate version in future to maybe 200-250g instead of 300g

Then just scoop balls of ganache, and then roll them in your outer layer - for the milk chocolate version I used ground hazelnuts.

  Rolled in hazelnut and looking pretty.

Then did the same for cocoa for the dark chocolate ones. I really wish I had a melon baller - I suspect this would have been much easier.I ended up using my round spoon measures in the main, it gave a nice shape and size without a lot of handling. Rolling them in my hands was messy and not worth it.

 Finished dark chocolate ones..

 But don't do this if you want a clean bench! Even when it's good, it's pretty messy.

End result:
Gift all ready, with extras to share at the party.

Lessons learned:

• Buy a $2 melon baller.
• Milk chocolate behaves slightly differently to dark, so reduce the cream proportion.

Guest opinions 

Interestingly (to me) I think I had the strongest reaction to a Heston dish to date .. (maybe everyone has been too polite previously?)  One guest tried the salted dark chocolate one and loudly proclaimed, "Oh God, that's disgusting! All I can taste is salt! .... I'd rather it was bitter!" To be fair, the poor guy didn't know I'd made them. In his (possible?) defence.. I do think that 1 teaspoon of salt was too much - I didn't find it overpowering but you could probably dial it back to 1/2 a teaspoon and still get the effect.

That said, several other guests liked them as they were - and a few noted that it was  just so unexpected - not bad but not what they were expecting (you get kind of used to that sort of thing for Heston I think...)

I think the dutch cocoa (which is what I generally use) possibly added to the contrast being fairly bitter in itself. (The cocoa "has a real kick", one guest noted)

The milk chocolate ones were a very popular (though a little too soft to my mind) and so probably a safer bet for a more "generic" / unadventurous palette. 

Verdict
I'm tempted to try a slightly-less salty version so the salted flavour is less pronounced, or perhaps one of the flavoured versions. They are pretty easy to whip up - maybe I'll just consider it next time I have leftover ganache from icing a cake. 

(Since I largely use ganache for cake icing, eating balls of it rolled in nuts etc. felt very decadent.)


Next: Not sure, next weekend I need to make Christmas puddings, so no Heston here - just Stephanie Alexander!