Schokolart

I came across this article in the NST the other day and was so relieved that the newspaper hadn't been obcscured from my knowledge (not thrown away la, that is). For it was about CHOCOLATE!!! Yum. It was featuring this chocolate boutique called Schokolart, located at Solaris in Mont Kiara. What's more, they even had a lil recipe that they printed up. I'm really tempted to try it out, but in lieu of my hectic lazy life now, I shall relegate making the chocs till after SPM or something. But meanwhile, because I am such a nice person, I am posting up the recipe. =D I paraphrase somewhat and added some to this recipe. But its to help.

Truffle with Caramel
makes about 200 (really?)

50g sugar
500g dark chocolate
270g cream
60g trimoline (inverted sugar syrup)
15g butter
warm milk to top up the cream
some more dark chocolate (maybe about 50-100g I think)
cocoa powder

Melt the sugar via a double boiler till it turns into light caramel. This means placing the bowl with the sugar over a pot of boiling water to melt the sugar and not over direct heat.
Boil the cream on low heat. Add the caramel; stir till dissolved completely. Then bring the cream back to its original weight of 270g by topping up with warm milk. Boil this with the trimoline.
* trimoline can be made by boiling for 20 minutes, 1gramme of citric acid, cream of tartar, or fresh lemon juice to every 1kilogramme of sugar and one part water.
Chop up the dark chocolate, put into a bowl, and pour the caramel mix over. Stir with a spatula till well combined, adding the butter. This is now ganache.
Pour your ganache into a shallow container lined with a plastic layer. Allow to rest for an hour, then, using a pastry bag with a no.4 (small nozzle la I presume), pipe small balls of the ganache onto parchment paper. Allow to set at room temperature.
While that is happening, temper a bar of dark chocolate. Melt the chocolate over a double boiler. Use a dry stainless steel bowl to hold the chocolate. Slowly stir till melted.
Get the cocoa powder ready in a bowl. Dip the ganache ino the tempered chocolate, then immediately coat in cocoa powder. Shake off excess cocoa. Enjoy. (I believe that they need to be put in the fridge if they aren't going to be consumed immediately)

In the course of typing out this recipe, I have discovered that I was kinda blind not to have seen through this. I have always known that chefs never, EVER give out the real thing (recipes). I was too disillusioned to have noticed immediately that this recipe was no different. It omits lots of steps, and one glaringly obvious omittance I am ashamed to say I did not realise immediately was the sentence 'one part water'. It does not tell how much constitutes that one part of water for this recipe. For all you know, it can range from a few drops to cupfuls. =.- Aniwae, I am still posting this post that you are reading now because I think that it should be posted because I have been typing this post for more than 15-30 minutes. And if I'm feeling hardworking, I could do my research and refine this recipe and then proceed to make it (which I hope to). If I find anything related to this recipe I'll post it up. And next time if and when I decide to post recipes, I'll make sure they are viable ones. :)

p.s. I just did some research, just after publishing this post, and, as it turns out, trimoline a.k.a. inverted sugar syrup needs no water in its making. Heehee. Wikipedia, the trusty old internet companion to me, says that trimoline is made by boiling 1g citric acid or cream of tartar, or 10ml of lemon juice to every 1kg of sugar (1g to 1kg). No water required. Mwahaha. In your face, people who gave this rather oversimplified recipe!