AKA tempering white chocolate is a damn pain in the ass.
[For part I of this series, where I discuss my experience with tempering and working with dark chocolate, please see my previous post]
High off of my success from the previous two days of making Belgian dark chocolate truffles, I was excited for my next adventure: white chocolate!
I was especially excited for the decorating possibilities that the shiny, pristine canvas of white chocolate provides. As I mentioned in my previous post, my beautiful aqua and violet cocoa butter splatter art didn’t quite translate on dark chocolate the way I had hoped (the violet looked navy blue, and was barely perceptible on the dark chocolate).
I am aware that white chocolate is polarizing. Since there are no cocoa solids in white chocolate (just cocoa butter, sugar, and milk solids), many people eschew it entirely. “It’s not real chocolate!” cry the naysayers, shaking their fists in consternation. And I get it. It’s not. But I appreciate some nice high quality white chocolate every once in a while! I even appreciate some garbage white chocolate sometimes, remember those Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Creme candy bars? As a kid, I was willing to trade 3 Snickers for one of those bad boys come Halloween.
However, I was also hesitant. From my research, I already knew that white chocolate requires lower temperatures than dark chocolate when it comes to the tempering process. I already anticipated it would be more difficult to melt the seeding chocolate, and that fluidity would be an issue with the lower temperature of the working chocolate (I had some struggles with fluidity already, depending on which brand of chocolate I was tempering).
I was right to be hesitant. But I’ll get to that in a moment.
First, I had to make the ganache filling!
One of the reasons I chose to work with white chocolate for this iteration, aside from the decoration possibilities, was that it seemed the fitting compliment to the Japanese yuzu flavor ganache filling I wanted to try out! I love yuzu so much. It’s such a deliciously fresh and distinctive citrus flavor. One of my favorite beers is the Hitochino Nest Yuzu Lager, and anytime a restaurant is serving anything that involves yuzu, I am going to want to order it.
I scoured Berkeley Bowl for yuzu fruit, but didn’t really hope/expect to find any. Luckily, I found bottles of yuzu juice in the Japanese food products aisle! Score. I had hoped to be able to find an actual yuzu fruit in order to zest the peel for stronger flavor, but figured that I could use a nice organic grapefruit in a pinch. But I got lucky: when I went back to Berkeley Bowl on friday to purchase more cream, I saw an employee putting out a brand new product: dried organic “yuzu pieces” (upon reading the label, it was very close to what I was looking for: dried yuzu peel)!
My first try at yuzu ganache didn’t quite go as planned. I tasted the yuzu juice on its own, and it seemed pretty flavorful! However, it is a juice, and not a concentrate. The rule of thumb when it comes to ganache is a one to one cream to chocolate ratio, and you reduce the amount of cream accordingly to account for any added liquid flavorings in order to not fuck up the consistency of the ganache. For example, if you’re working with 4 oz of cream and 4 oz of chocolate and want to add 1 oz of liquor for flavoring, then you would reduce the amount of cream to 3 oz. Otherwise, the ganache may be too liquid-y! Hence, I started with 3 oz of cream, 4 oz of Guittard white chocolate chips, and 1 oz of yuzu juice. Tasting it, I couldn’t detect the yuzu flavor at all in this ratio! Dammit! I tried adding increasing amounts of dried yuzu zest in order to bump up the flavor, but in the end, I had to add more yuzu juice. Unfortunately, this meant my first my ganache was way too runny.
In another bad move, I also tried adding 1 tbsp of softened butter to my ganache. It can sometimes be a good idea (depending on the application of the ganache) as it imparts an even silkier mouthfeel. But in this case, it sort of made everything worse. I had insufficiently softened my butter so it required a shit ton of whisking to incorporate it. My first yuzu ganache was a runny sad mess. It wouldn’t set properly.
I had to do it again! This time, I went with 2 oz of cream, 2 oz of yuzu juice, and 4 oz of Guittard white chocolate. This ratio ended up working much better. I used approximately 2 teaspoons of dried yuzu zest. I omitted butter entirely. This time, the consistency was good, and the ganache set nicely at room temperature. The yuzu flavor was shining through the ganache, despite the intense sweetness of the white chocolate. I think it helped that I added a pinch of sea salt too!
Now it was time to decorate! On Thursday, I had experimented with a new decorating technique. I bought some orange colored edible luster dust from Spun Sugar, and tried brushing it on the insides of the polycarbonate mold before pouring in my tempered chocolate. I had watched someone do it on YouTube to great success. Sadly, it went horribly for me. When I released the chocolates from the mold, the shine of the tempered chocolate was mostly obscured, and instead of being shimmery, the luster dust just caused the chocolate to look dusty and rough! FML! Upon research, it looks like the general application of luster dust is to brush on after the chocolates come out of the mold. Whoops.
Not wanting to mess around, I decided to use the same splatter technique I employed the previous days, but with a twist! I melted down some more of the 100% pure cocoa butter, and added some orange and green fat soluble food color respectively. To the orange cocoa butter, I added a bit of the orange luster dust to mix in, just to try. The liquid cocoa butter shimmered impressively! But sadly, when I did a temper test of a few drops in the fridge, it was clear the shimmer was not very noticeable once the cocoa butter set. Oh well. I dipped a small pastry brush in the orange cocoa butter, and painted a stripe on one section of each mold. Once that was set, I took another pastry brush and splattered green cocoa butter over the mold.
Now it was time to temper the white chocolate! Hooooooo boy. I worked with Callebaut couverture white chocolate callets, from Belgium. I used the same double boiler method for tempering that I used on Wednesday, but with slightly lower temperatures. I melted the chocolate to 110F, then added my seed callets and stirred to bring down to 82 – 84F. My god, melting the white chocolate callets was a chore. My forearms were burning, it’s a good thing I do aerial silks and pole and have grip and forearm strength built up. I had read one article that said that the working temperature of white chocolate was 84F but I was skeptical. At that temperature, the white chocolate was far too viscous to work with, and many of the seed callets were just refusing to melt all the way, no matter how long I stirred.
I did some more research, and found this article, which said that I could bring the chocolate up to 87F as a workable temperature. I don’t know if the beta crystals are destroyed at the same temperature when it comes to white chocolate as dark chocolate, and my initial google searches did not yield any concrete answers aside from lower temperatures being necessary for reasons [vague hand-waving gesture]. But I knew I did not want to ruin the temper and start over again, after stirring that bowl of white chocolate for so long! 87F turned out to be a sufficient temperature to melt the last small chunks of callets in there, phew. But, it was a very delicate balance trying to keep the white chocolate at 87F! Stirring the bowl on the double boiler for 5 seconds at at time, then stirring the bowl on the counter, then returning it to the double boiler for 3 seconds, back and forth, all the while watching my thermometer like a hawk. So. Much. STIRRING. Poor Will, at one point he tried to talk to me when I was engaged in this stirring dance while I was waiting for the “temper test” of a tiny bit of chocolate setting in the fridge, and I snapped at him. Tempering chocolate was causing me to lose my temper (DAD JOKE). I apologized later 🙂
Once the temper test came out satisfactory, It was time to pour the still remarkably viscous white chocolate into the mold! Because the chocolate was still so thick, it was a bit of a pain to work with. 87F just doesn’t give you much of a window, it cools down so quickly! Luckily, after banging out the air bubbles and pouring out/scraping the excess, I was still left with some thin shells! NICE.
While these shells set, I scooped the cooled ganache into a piping bag. I also had to keep doing the stirring dance with the white chocolate on and off and back on again over the double boiler. After the amount of work I had put into tempering that batch, I was not about to let it cool completely and have to start over! No f-in way. I think this is why people generally suggest working with a larger amount of chocolate (like 2 lbs) – it will stay workable longer. I’ve been working with 1 lb at a time and it’s a right pain in the ass.
I piped the yuzu ganache into the set shells to about 3/4 full. Ideally, you want to give the ganache time to set in the shells as well. If it forms a bit of a skin, this helps to prevent the ganache from mixing in/splooging out when you pour more tempered chocolate on top of it to seal in/finish the truffles. I’ve had mixed results with putting the ganache filled shells in the fridge – I feel like it affects the cocoa butter decoration poorly, and leads to some cracking/separation of the decoration from the chocolate. To be safe with his batch, I skipped the fridge and let the ganache set in the shells for a bit at room temperature. However, since I was still doing the now loathsome task of keeping the tempered white chocolate at 87f over the double boiler, I was eager to finish these truffles. I didn’t want to stir any more! UGH.
Admittedly, I rushed a bit and poured the tempered white chocolate on too soon. While waiting for the white chocolate truffle bottoms to set, I noticed that there was some liquid pooling on a handful of the truffles – this was the ganache that had partially liquified and sneaked out. I took some extra tempered white chocolate and an offset spatula to seal the bottoms of these as well as I could, but as these wouldn’t stay fresh as long due to the ganache being exposed to the air, most of these leaking truffles were relegated to being eaten at home!
I let the truffles finish setting, and then turned them out onto some baking parchment. I’m not sure if it was the polycarbonate mold being new (I did season it with cocoa butter first), or the white chocolate being a diva, or what but I had a hell of a time turning these truffles out. Several stuck to the mold, and cracked when I finally released them. BOO.
But hurray! All the stirring was worth it: the white chocolate had tempered beautifully with glorious shine, and the painted and splattered design popped on the light backdrop! They looked great!
How do they taste? To be honest, with the additional white chocolate of the shells, the yuzu flavor is now almost completely overpowered! Noooooo. So sad. White chocolate is just so sweet and cloying that the delicate yuzu flavor of my ganache doesn’t hold up. While the ganache alone is wonderfully citrus-y, it’s hard to detect the citrus when the truffle is eaten as a whole. Sigh.
I think the next time I try this, I might try to find a yuzu concentrate. I think that the juice is too subtle, and the amount of juice it would require to punch up the flavor would render the ganache the wrong texture as it would basically omit all the cream.
Next, I picked the best looking, most structurally sound truffles from all my batches of truffles to put in gift boxes.
The cream of the crop were gifted to my friends Adam and Cassidy at their wedding engagement party yesterday!
I also brought along the imperfect truffles (still delicious) to share with the party guests. They seemed to be a hit, as the tupperware container was quickly empty!
Today, I took the leftover chilled ganache and divided it into little balls rolled in Guittard cocoa powder (for the olive oil and sea salt ganache) and matcha powder (in the case of the yuzu ganache) as additional rustic homemade truffles. They are also delicious, and it was honestly a nice break from tempering.
Truffle adventure complete! I’ve had a great time obsessing over chocolate making these last 5 days. I’m going to take a little break, but I’ve got another chocolate project up my sleeve for next week! Stay tuned.