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| chocolate bacon truffle |
Sorry about missing last week’s Baking with Butchie, but we were busy. Living in the nation’s capital for the Fourth of July keeps one on their toes. This week, we decided to try to recreate one of our favorite items on the Savannah and Charleston trip we took. The filling for the original truffle was a little stickier than we wanted,, so we decided to try for a fluffy bacon ganache instead. Did I say try? SUCCEED! [Word. That filling was the best idea we ever had. –B.]
I’ll go ahead and apologize for the lack of precision in this recipe. It’s going to come to you in parts. Mostly because it’s hard to say, use the fat of six pieces of bacon. Bacon was not created equally. So instead please laugh at our measurements in grams and one part, two part, red part, blue part, instructions. [As long as you’re measuring carefully, you can scale this up or down as much as you like. You will need more bacon fat than you will actual bacon, but what you do with the leftover strips is up to you. Obviously ours didn’t last very long. –B.]
The most important advice we have is to use good quality chocolate, and be VERY cautious tempering the chocolate. It’s not an easy process, and even as we were succeeding we weren’t sure it was going to work. Good luck!
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| clockwise: molded chocolate, melted chocolate, garnished truffles, cut in half, filled molds, excess chocolate |
Bacon Chocolate Truffles
1 part bacon grease
1 part butter, melted
2 parts dark chocolate
Chopped up bacon to taste
Plenty of dark chocolate to temper
Cook the bacon and measure the bacon grease in grams. Melt and equivalent amount of butter in the same pan (uncleaned to pick up more bacon flavor) you cooked the bacon in. Add in the two parts of chocolate and melt.
Once all is melted and combined, set aside to cool. We opted to cool ours covered in the freezer stirring frequently. Chop a few pieces of cooked bacon into tiny pieces, and set aside. We like it extra crispy for texture.
While the mixture is cooling temper the chocolate. Place two thirds of the chocolate in a double boiler. Melt slowly to 107 degrees. Remove from heat and stir until it reaches 110 degrees. Add in remaining third of chocolate and stir to combine until the mixture reaches 90-93 degrees. Use immediately. If using molds, coat the molds and place in the freezer.
Once the mixture has cooled to a spreadable consistency, spoon it out into a stand mixture and whip at a high speed until it is light and fluffy. Fold in bacon pieces.
Fill frozen molds, leaving room to seal with extra tempered chocolate.
Cover with tempered chocolate and freeze overnight.
Demold carefully in the morning. If you can resist eating one you are a better person than I.
Enjoy!
