Truffle Shuffle

Here's that truffle post I mentioned earlier.

I'm sure it's not surprising that I love junk food. I love cake and chocolate and chocolate cake. Sometimes, it doesn't even have to be that great. Like Passover. The cake mixes are...edible, but definitely not great. They're far better than any cake you can buy pre-made in stores, though. Those taste like cardboard topped with sawdust. And in my opinion, making Passover cakes from scratch requires too much effort and thought to be worth it, so mixes it is.

The obvious problem with mixes is that they all need eggs. My mother tried substituting apple sauce for eggs in one cake and it came out...like crap. It was way too sweet and was softer than fudge in consistency. I was the only one that ate it and I only ate it so it wouldn't go to waste (and because it kinda sorta tasted like chocolate. Almost).

I needed a fix, so I made truffles from the Conscious Kitchen's recipe and uploaded pictures of them to my Flickr. One of my coworkers saw them, thought they looked great, and asked me to make a batch for her to take to a family Passover dinner. I would have totally done it for free, but she offered to pay me and I had to pay my taxes last month, so we made a deal. My first sale! I was so proud that I'm sure I was really annoying to talk to for at least a day.



Make sure you check out the pictures on Conscious Kitchen, but do yourself a favor and have a drool rag handy. Don't say I didn't warn you!

I didn't make nearly as many variations as they did because I was limited by what I had in the house for Passover, but I don't think anyone got bored of mine either. For liquid, I used a splash of vanilla extract, mixed with coconut milk to make 1/2 cup total. When I made them for my family, I used cocoa powder, chopped cashews, almonds and craisins and ground walnuts as toppings. For the batch I sold, I used them as fillings as well.

My work station for the second batch:



Toppings, clockwise from the top left, I'm rolling in chopped almonds, cashews ground walnuts, cocoa powder and chopped craisins. I didn't have a food processor so all chopping was done by hand. Ew:



The truffles are incredibly easy to make. Just melt your chocolate in your heated liquid. Pour the whole mess into pan and refrigerate it until it solidifies (which took hours in the small pan I used. If you have room in your fridge, use something large and increase your surface area to cool your chocolate faster). Scoop out the chocolate a bit at a time, roll it into balls, roll the balls in your toppings. Voila! Truffles.

That said, it may take a bit of trial and error to get your aesthetic right. For example, when I tried to top the truffles with chopped craisins, no matter what I did, I ended up with loads of craisins sticking to each other, leaving bald spots in some areas and piles of fruit in others. I thought maybe rolling the truffle in cocoa powder before chopped craisin would help, but then they barely stuck at all. The next try was powder after craisin. That did keep the chocolate off the eater's fingers, but looked like crap, as you can see toward the rear of this picture:



I remedied this in the batch I sold by filling the truffles with craisin instead (I just wrapped the chocolate around a few craisins before rolling it into the ball shape - this also worked with nuts), putting one small piece of craisin on the outside to identify it and rolling the rest in cocoa powder:



Yeah, it sort of looks like a boob. And I don't have the coordination to keep the cocoa powder off the craisin bit completely, but it's still an improvement. These were the ones that went over best. There was almost a fight over them in my office. I'm not even lying.

When my brother first saw this on the kitchen table, he thought they were Dunkin' Donuts Munchkins. Somehow, he completely forgot it was Passover, I'm vegan and Dunkin' Donuts would never put real, unprocessed nuts on anything.



I love this picture. It looks like I'm building a truffle army, but the recipe actually makes about 24 pieces:



Truffles, ready for delivery to my first customer:



I'm definitely going to make these again (I say that about everything, don't I? But I mean it this time because I have a plan!). I want to try using Frangelico as the liquid, and maybe some coffee liquor (separately). I think it'd be a nice touch to roll them in red and green sprinkles and pack them into pretty boxes during the holidays. Mini cupcake cups might be the perfect size to hold them and make them look fancy and professional.

Passover, Post the Second

After I finished making everything I did on Friday, I pretty much fell into a coma and didn't wake up until around 6 PM Saturday and did nothing but eat and read for the rest of the day. Awesome. I got myself all rested up for the cookfest that was Sunday.



The first thing I realized was that I hadn't done anything with all those portobello mushrooms from Thursday night/Friday morning; they were still marinating. I grabbed them from the fridge, and at first I thought they'd frozen because the contents of the container was one solid block. Then I thought they went bad. Turned out the oil I used had solidified in the fridge. Whew! I stirred it all up a bit and it all broke up and was fine. Not realizing the Yellow Rose Recipes recipe makes way more marinade than the Veganomicon one does, I followed the Veganomicon instructions for roasting portobello mushrooms, doubling the cook time because the oven was set to 250 F and I couldn't change it. About halfway through, I realized I was being dumb and that the mushrooms would never really roast while sitting in the soup they were in. Maybe they'd boil, but not roast. So I ladled out about half the marinade, which improved things.

The texture of the mushrooms came out very good, but the taste was a little weird. Kind of sour. I love sour food, so that's fine. My parents tried them and decided to leave it all for me, though.

Next, I made the Broccoli Vinaigrette from The Jewish Vegetarian Year Cookbook. Here's the weird thing about this vinaigrette: there's no vinegar in it. There is, however, plenty of garlic and a huge portion of awesome. This is another one of those did-I-really-need-a-cookbook-to-tell-me-that sort of recipes. Super easy, yet, because it's me, full of fail. I didn't have a steamer basket for Passover, so I decided to try steaming my broccoli in a strainer. A plastic strainer. Well, I hope my mother likes her new abstract strainer sculpture. Even if she doesn't, she liked the broccoli, so that's OK. My father liked it so much he asked for seconds, even though he usually can't stand to look at the stuff. My brother had to be restrained so I'd have some left to photograph. Good stuff.

Here's a mushroom, the broccoli and the Green-Wa. A very nice meal:



I also made the Diner Home Fries from Veganomicon. Those were too good. They didn't even last until I was able to use my camera! The cooked pepper made my grandmother worry about her agita again, but it didn't bother her at all and again, my brother didn't eat around the green bits. The peppers and onions cook just long enough to be tender but still maintain some crunch, which is great when mixed in with the soft potatoes. I'd eat these every day if I wouldn't have to fight my family for them.

I really pulled out all the stops for dessert.

First, there were Tea-Poached Pears in Chocolate Sauce from Veganomicon. This is the perfect dessert to make if you're cooking for someone special and/or are serving a really heavy dinner. Most people I know are impressed by desserts that come with sauce poured on the plate. There's just something classy about it (unless it's a mess). If you have the skills to make designs around the edges, even better (I don't, but when I accidentally dripped, I decided to drip all around to make it look intentional). Also, it's nice and light. It's not really rich, or fudgy or a heavy cake. It's just fruit. Really, really good fruit. It takes a few steps to make, but it's not difficult (though whoever you make it for will probably think it is).



And I made The Conscious Kitchen's truffles. They're going to get another post all to themselves, so for now, just know they're lovely. Delicious, rich, impressive-looking and easy, though time consuming.







Don't worry, I'm not done with Passover yet!