Salted Caramel Truffles

(Please excuse the ginormous gap at the opening of this post, I am on the verge of having a blogspot induced nervous breakdown where formatting is concerned.)

Courtesy of Edd Kimber's beautiful book "Say It With Cake", these truffles only served as fuel to my current salted caramel addiction. They were requested by my sister especially to top her Chocolate Truffle and Honeycomb Cake, the recipe for which will be up soon! 

They come with a warning though; it is hopelessly difficult to bake anything with salted caramel in it without devouring all the caramel before actually using it... and consuming one's body weight in salted caramel can't be healthy. 

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

300g dark chocolate 

300g caster sugar 

300ml double cream

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

20g light brown sugar 

20g unsalted butter 

1/2 tsp flaked sea salt 

cocoa powder, for dusting 

Method:

Put the chocolate in a medium heatproof bowl and set aside. Put the caster sugar in a medium pan over medium heat and leave until the sugar begins to dissolve and caramelize around the edges. Using a silicon spatula, drag the dissolved sugar towards the middle to help it dissolve evenly.

Once the sugar is fully dissolved and has turned a dark golden brown colour, pour in half the cream, and all the vanilla and light brown sugar, it will bubble up furiously, so be careful and go sl

owly. Once the bubbling has subsided, add the remaining cream. If the caramel is lumpy, put over a low heat and allow to melt. Once you have a smooth caramel, add the butter and sea salt, and stir gently to combine. 

Pour the hot caramel over the chocolate and stir gently to combine. Chill until firm enough to roll into balls. 

To make the truffles, have a small bowl of cocoa powder ready and a baking tray lined with baking parchment. Take large teaspoons of the ganache mixture and roll into balls, then roll in the cocoa powder and set on the baking tray. Chill the truffles until needed. 

Maybe it has something to do with my distinct lack of hand-eye coordination, but when making these I discovered I am completely useless at rolling things into ball shapes. Hence, these were more of squashed spheres. But that just adds to the authenticity really, doesn't it? I hope Edd would agree. 

These would make a perfect gift, just like my Fresh Blueberry Marshmallows!