Raspberry White-Chocolate Truffles

I found this recipe on a food-porn site I like called fridgg.com. By food-porn site, I actually mean amateur-food porn, as opposed to the professional photos on sites like TasteSpotting and FoodGawker. Those two sites are really hard to get your photos in; I’ve had luck only once with one of the sites. Anyway, this recipe is from a site called Wild Wild Whisk.

These truffles are actually really easy to make. It may be tough to find the needed freeze-dried raspberries, but Whole-Paycheck Foods Market does have a couple of varieties. They’re really expensive for what you get ($6 an ounce), but you need only an ounce.

What I liked about these is they’re both tart and sweet, without being overly sweet. And the raspberry/chocolate center has a nice consistency. I was concerned that dipping them may be troublesome, but I just used fork for dipping, and it worked just fine.

One note about these: the recipe doesn’t include tempering the chocolate, which I spent the time to do (only semi-successfully). Un-tempered chocolate doesn’t have the crunch that tempered does when you bite into it, and tempering also gives a nice sheen to the finished product. Note in the photos that my truffles had only a semi-sheen, though the chocolate did have a nice snap to it when being bitten into.

What you’ll need:

• 1 oz freeze-dried raspberries
• 6 oz white-chocolate chips or melting chips (don’t skimp and buy cheap ones)
• 3 oz heavy cream
• 8 oz dark melting-chocolate chips or melting chips (again, use good-quality chips)
• Reserve a bit of the dried raspberry for topping the final product

What to do:

Grind up the freeze-dried raspberries in a food processor. Get them to as fine a powder as you can, otherwise the truffle filling will be grainy (mine was a little bit). Add the powder to a bowl with the white chocolate chips.

Heat the cream in a saucepan over medium heat until it starts to gently simmer. Pour it over the white chocolate and raspberry powder and let it sit for a half-minute. You may not think the hot cream would melt all of the white chocolate, but it does. Combine everything with a spatula until the chocolate is completely melted. Put in the refrigerator to cool for about an hour.

When the chocolate/raspberries has cooled, scoop out small amounts with a spoon or a melon baller. Roll into truffle-size balls and add to a parchment-lined container of whatever kind. Put back in the refrigerator for another hour. It’s best to wear nitrile or vinyl gloves for this step to keep the heat from your hands from warming the filling as you roll it.

Melt and temper the chocolate in whatever manner best works for you. I’ve you’ve never tempered chocolate before, and it’s a pain in the ass. It takes quite a long time for the chocolate to cool before being reheated. Like a really really long time.

Once your chocolate is ready, it’s time to dip the white chocolate/raspberry balls. I did this by setting the filling ball onto a fork and just dipping it into the chocolate, then letting it drip off before setting back onto a parchment-lined surface.

After you dip each one, take these two cool extra steps: Right after you dip one, take the fork and drizzle a bit of melted chocolate across the top of the truffle—it makes for a nice effect. Then—before the chocolate dries—if you have a bit of powdered raspberry, sprinkle a bit on each truffle. It makes them look more professionally made.

Refrigerate for about an hour before serving.

I asked my neighbor to take a few shots; these are hers below. Note that she is a better photographer than me, and her camera lens clearly superior.