Chocolate Truffles: A Gourmet Confectionary

Chocolate truffles are a gourmet type of chocolate confectionary characterized by their ganache (pronounced "genay"), which is a filling made of chocolate and heavy cream. Although the ganache is the typical filling, truffles can also be filled with creme, liquor, melted chocolate, fruit fillings, toffee, fudge, mint, chocolate chips, nougat and other fillings. Interestingly, chocolate truffles resemble the truffle fungus they are named after, distinguished by their shape, which can either be sphere-shaped, cone-shaped or curve-shaped.

There are three (3) common types of chocolate truffles:

American chocolate truffles

Founded by chocolatier, and founder of Joseph Schmidt Confections, in the mid-1980s, American chocolate truffles are characterized by a mixture of half-egg shaped, dark and milk chocolate coated truffle hardened with either butter fat or cocoa nut oil.

A variation of the American chocolate truffle is the Canadian Harvey truffle, which, in addition to the above ingredients, includes graham crackers and peanut butter.

European chocolate truffles

Different than their American counterparts, European truffles -- made with syrup -- are characterized by their oil-in-water type base consisting of cocoa powder and fats to create this distinct emulsion.

Swiss chocolate truffles

Because Swiss chocolate truffles are made by mixing dairy cream, butter and melted chocolate, they have an extremely short shelf life, usually only lasting 2-3 days.

Easy, do-it-yourself chocolate truffle recipes:

Though chocolate truffles can be quite expensive, you can save some money and have fun by making chocolate truffles at home with these simple, do-it-yourself recipes:

• Ghirardelli Sinful Chocolate Truffles
• Basic Chocolate Truffle Recipe
• Jacque Torres on Truffles