I just tried to make truffles for the first time and decided on a recipe for Oreo Truffles from: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Easy-OREO-Truffles/Detail.aspx

Literally, the only thing I can taste is cream cheese and nothing else! Also, after I dipped them and placed them on a the wax-paper covered baking sheet, they were flat on the bottom instead of a round shape. This is what I did:

Crush 9 of the cookies to fine crumbs via rolling pin & ziplock & then blender such as magic bullet ; reserve for later use. Crush remaining 36 cookies to fine crumbs; place in medium bowl. Add cream cheese; mix until well blended.

Chill this cookie/cream cheese mixture in fridge/freezer for 10 - 30min.

Shape into small sized balls (they get bigger when dipped). You can use a teaspoon to measure first ball.

Chill the balls in fridge/freezer for 10min 1hr.

Dip the balls into melted chocolate. Fish them out with 2 spoons.

- Place the ball on the spoon and use the 2nd spoon the pour the chocolate. Then pass the ball to the other spoon. This will keep the ball from falling apart.

Roll the freshly dipped balls in mixture. (crushed oreo cookies, cocoa powder)

Chill the truffles on waxed-paper covered baking sheet for another 20 30min then leave in fridge until ready to eat.

After I dipped them in melted chocolate (maybe chocolate too hot?) some of them broke apart and melted when they came in contact with the chocolate.

Yuck. Where'd I go wrong? Maybe I should have tried a more classic truffle for my first time.

updated by @dan3: 04/10/15 02:53:07

I wouldn't call that a truffle...more like a chocolate covered cream cheese ball. You will get the consistency you want by making a ganache with chocolate and heavy cream; no cream cheese needed. Here is a pretty simple recipe you might want to try to start out. Dipping them in chocolate is more complicated, especially if you don't want to have to keep them refrigerated; then you need to learn about tempering. Coating with cocoa, crushed nuts, crushed oreos, etc is easier.

That's another question I have. I've checked in all of the grocery stores in my area of town and there is no "heavy" cream. All there is is whipping cream. I asked at the bakery and same result. Can I just use whipping cream instead of heavy cream or add a couple tbsp to the whipping cream to make it heavy?

Thanks for the quick reply! I'd love to dip in chocolate but I see I'm not good at that since it didn't coat everywhere and after they cooled, there was that rough bottom to the "balls".

Heavy cream IS whipping cream. Usually anything with more than 30% Milk Fat is considered heavy cream, and your whipping cream is probably around 35%

There are some very fundamental chocolate confection making concepts you appear to be missing. I would recommend that you purchase a couple of in depth chocolate cook books which cover some of the "theoretical" components of working with Chocolate.

As an FYI, chocolate is arguably the most difficult confection to work with today, and can be the cause of significant frustration for you if you don't understand how it behaves as an ingredient in your confections. Once you understand it's behaviour, the outcome of your confection creations become almost predictable and you no longer really need recipes. You're able to create your own!

Cheers. Hope this helps.

Brad

Thanks for the heavy cream explanation. I'll check the percentages. I took the batch of about 35 or so Oreo Truffles I made to class with me last night as well as to work. I was very surprised! Every person was genuinely ecstatic with them. There were plenty of "they're awesome!" remarks, "unbelievable", "whoa!", "dangerously addicting", "i'm in love" and a few other remarks including "you missed your calling". One went into a chocolate coma and the other was bouncing around the walls. They all seemed to enjoy them more than me but perhaps that's because they don't know how much cream cheese it called for. Now many of them want the recipe.

Do you have any suggestions of which chocolate cookbooks to find?

The first book I bought was Making Artisan Chocolates by Andrew Shotts. I recommend it for beginners, it has an adequate amount of information with a broad range of recipe types.

As you gain more experience, or if you just want an overload of information I recommend Chocolates & Confections by Peter Greweliing.

As far as your melting chocolate, without going into the practice of tempering, your problem most likely is your chocolate was too hot to dip, it should be about 89, which brings me to investment #1 a good thermometer is absolutely necessary, infared is what I think is best.

Peter Greweling's book is EXCELLENT!

I own a copy, have read it several times now, and every time I learn something new and get different ideas. Money well spent.

Thirding the recommendation on Chocolates & Confections. He does a great job explaining the chemistry/theory, along with providing several decent recipes.

Wow! I'll definitely have to take a look at the Chocolate & Confections book. As far as cream goes, do you usually just use whipping cream if it calls for "heavy cream" as Brad mentioned or should I use crme frache which I did find recently in the grocery store?

Thanks

crme frache is a hoity toity term for high fat sour cream, so unless you want sour cream truffles, I wouldn't use it. Whipping cream is heavy cream (BEFORE being turned into crme frache). There's also 18% MF cream, and (sometimes depending on where you are) a cream called "half and half".

My recommendation is to use whipping cream before it goes sour.

Cheers.

Cool, thanks again Brad. I think I remember reading about crme frache with regards to making the thick spanish hot chocolate.

I'm going to get these books from the library but while I have you guys here, can you give me any tips on retaining the circular shape to truffles after they've been dipped and chilled? As I've mentioned before, after my truffles were dipped and chilled, the bottom of them ended up having a flat surface.