Christmas Celebration

Christmas evening was spent at a relative's wedding dinner. Therefore, my family decided to have our usual Christmas celebration on Boxing Day instead. What made the dinner worth waiting for was the Black Truffles. After our White Truffles dinner last month, we decided to have Black Truffles for our Christmas celebration since it was in season. The truffles were sponsored by my younger sister, while my elder sister prepared the food for us. My elder sister is very resourceful. She managed to source for reasonably good black truffles for our dinner.

As usual, I will prepare the dessert. For this special dinner, I made Concorde Dessert. The recipe was extracted from Daily Delicious. My younger sister also ordered some ice-cream from the same source. Therefore, we had two desserts!

After trying both the white truffles and black truffles, I can understand why white truffles cost more. The smell and flavour is more intense for white truffles, compared to black. A small amount of white is enough to provide the taste and flavouring. Black truffles cost about a third of white truffles. Personally, I prefer white truffles!

Here's recollecting what we had.

Salad

Black Truffle Pasta with Scallops (the most classic way to have truffles!)

Concorde Dessert

Classic Truffle - Sabayon semifreddo and gianduja ice cream coated with crushed hazelnuts and cocoa beans

Kids' Bomb - Gianduja ice cream with a cream core (for the kids of course!)

The Concorde cake was very nice. I made 14 cups (thanks to Grace for giving me the lovely cups), just enough for my whole family. I made the meringue smaller, even though I doubled the recipe. There were leftovers for my chocolate meringues. This recipe used raw eggs for the mousse. The mousse was very stable, ie. it was very easy to manage and wasn't the runny type.

Recipe for Concorde Dessert, extracted from Daily Delicious

(Makes 14 cups)

Chocolate meringue

240g Egg whites

200g Icing sugar

60g Cocoa powder

200g Fine sugar

Chocolate mousse

250g Dark chocolate (70%)

150g Unsalted butter (soft)

4 Egg yolks

80g Icing sugar

180g Egg whites

20g Fine sugar

Icing sugar for sprinkle over the top of the Concordes

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 120°C

2. Line the baking trays with silicone baking mat.

3. Sift the cocoa powder with the icing sugar, set aside.

4. Whip the egg whites until soft peaks formed, gradually add the granulated sugar and whip until stiff peaks formed.

5. Sift the icing sugar and cocoa into the meringue, fold lightly until fully combined.

6. Put the batter into the piping bag fitted with 1 cm piping nozzle.

7. Pipe the meringue into approximately 45 disks (3 inches in diameter), then pipe the rest of the meringue into long strips.

8. Bake for 2 hours, or until the meringue dry, turn off the oven and rest the meringue in the oven for 1 hour. (After 30mins, leave the oven door ajar for 5mins to release the steam. Repeat this once again after one hour)

9. After taking the meringue out of the oven, let cool completely before proceeding to the next step.
(Note from dailydelicious: you can bake the meringue and keep it in the airtight container for 2-3 days at room temperature. For me, I baked the day before.)

Making the chocolate mousse:

1. Melt the chocolate and the butter in the microwave. Be careful not to overheat the chocolates. Stir together to combine.

2. Pour the egg yolks (one at a time) into the chocolate mixture, stir to combine after each addition. Sift the icing sugar into the chocolate mixture, stir to combine.

3. Whip the egg whites until soft peaks formed, gradually add the granulated sugar and whip until stiff peaks formed.

4. Fold the meringue into the chocolate mixture, 1/3 of the meringue at a time, fold lightly until combined.

Assemble:

1. Trim the sides of the meringue to ensure that it can fit into the cups.

2. Scoop the chocolate mousse to fill the meringue.

3. Then repeat #1 and 2.

4. Cut the meringue strips into small pieces, and decorate the top with the strips.

5. Sprinkle the icing sugar over the cake. Refrigerate until ready to serve. Ensure that they are stored in air-tight container in the refrigerate as chocolates absorb surrounding odours.

This is my entry for the Christmas Giveaway hosted by Swee San of The Sweet Spot and I'm submitting this post to the Aspiring Bakers #2 too!

A White Truffle Dinner

My feasting seemed to have gotten better and better with each meal. My weekend ended with a White Truffle dinner at my elder sister's place. She voluntarily arranged and prepared for us a White Truffle dinner, fully sponsored by my youngest sister. I'm truly counting my blessings for having many good friends, and a wonderful family! If a huge family like us were to dine out ordering white truffle meal, it could easily cost us half a thousand dollars!

My sister bought a 38g White Truffle from Culina, costing $247 ($6,500/kg). Myself, being pretty ignorant about truffles, was pleasantly pleased to have a feel of the truffle and smell it! It was odd shaped and looked very ugly. My sister took 45mins to clean this precious thing. It had to be wrapped up in papers, and had to keep out of water. The moment it touched water, it will rot. So she wrapped it up, placed it in a container and put it in the chiller before using it.

The dinner started with Salad and Baked Orange Salmon as appetisers. There were two kinds of salad. I missed out the other salad.

Then, she made us clear our palate by giving each of us a scoop of Mixed Fruit Sorbet. The Sorbet was so good, each of us had two scoops instead! Haha...

Then came the highlight of the day - Classic White Truffle Pasta. This was how she prepared the pasta. She cooked the fettuccine in boiling water before mixing with unsalted butter and fresh grounded black pepper. It was then scooped into our plates. Over each plates, she used a truffle shaver to shave the white truffles. After that, we added in freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. For once, we got ourselves a generous shavings of white truffles on our pasta, unlike if we were to dine in restaurants.

Finally, the meal was completed with my Dark Chocolate Truffles. We thought the Chocolate truffles would compliment the white truffles. Come to think of it, the my chocolate truffles do have odd shapes that looked like the white truffles!

Much effort has been put in to conceptualise this meal. Even if I had the white truffles on hand, I won't known how to prepare it. Thanks all to my elder sister for taking the time and effort to let us experience fine dining food. And also thanks to my youngest sister for sponsoring this wonderful meal and her generosity!

Information on Truffles. I was told black truffles can be cultivated while white truffles can only be grown from the wild. You can find out more by reading from here. I also found a write-up by Chef Jocelyn on her blog on White Truffle.

Recipe for Chocolate Truffles, (I can't remember where I got this from).

Ingredients:
227g Guanaja Valrhona Chocolate Feves (70%), finely chopped
1/2 cup Heavy cream
Unsweetened cocoa powder, for rolling

Method:
1. Put chocolate into a large heatproof bowl. Bring cream just to a boil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat.
2. Pour over chocolate in the bowl. Let it stand for 5 mins. Then stir till smooth.
3. Pour chocolate mixture into a shallow dish pan. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until mixture is cold and set but still pilable, about 30mins.
4. Using a teaspoon or a 1/2 inch melon baller, scoop balls of chocolate mixture, transferring them to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper as you work.
5. Refrigerate truffles for about 10mins.
6. Using a sieve, dust each truffle in cocoa powder to coat, then quickly shape truffle into a rough round.
7. Refrigerate truffles in an airtight container until ready to serve, up to 2 weeks. Before serving, reshape into rounds, and roll each truffle in cocoa powder, if desired.

Note:
~ You can add in one tablespoon liquer to your preference. I omitted this as my family don't like liquer.

Royce? It's Joyce!!

Having attended a few workshops, I must say, the last workshop at Shermay's with Joycelyn's Chocolate Treats, was the best so far. Why? Because out of four recipes, I've successfully made three! That is like 75% passed, and it's Band II already! Hahaha...

Being a great fan of Royce's Nama Chocolates, I was elated when I tried Joycelyn's Truffles au Chocolat. The texture, the taste was exactly like that! It could easily passed off as Nama chocolate! I waited till last week to make this truffles, so that I can give my family a treat, for Mother's Day!


I used the Valrhona Equatoriale Noire 55% Dark Chocolate instead of the original Majari 64%. Then coat it with Valrhona cocoa powder. I only made half the recipe, and has already about 40pcs. Sorry, but I'm unable to share the recipes with all of you. If anyone of you are really interested to make this, I suggest you sign up for this workshop the next time Shermay has again. It's really worth it!

Another Busy Maidless Week!

It's another busy week without my domestic helper. So I tried not to bake/make too complicated food. This time, I made green tea ice-cream and chocolate truffles.

I: Green Tea Ice-Cream

Mix the egg yolks, sugar & milk.

Added green tea paste.

Pour the green tea mixture into whipped cream & mix.

Mix them throughly.

Put it into the container and freeze.

Finally the creamy green tea ice-cream!

Recipe extracted from Japanese Food Website.

II: Chocolate Truffles
Made the chocolate truffles for my colleagues for their birthdays. Happens to be in the same month and the same horoscope as me!

5 different toppings.

Wrapped them up nicely with ribbons.



Recipe extracted from Joy of Baking, Chocolate Truffles.