Video Transcript

I'm John Moeller, former White House chef for three first families and author of "Dining at the White House." Today we're here at RLPS Architects Bistro in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and we're going to show you how to make champagne truffles. The champagne truffles are going to include bittersweet chocolate. We have champagne, cognac and heavy cream. Afterwards we're going to roll them in toasted almonds and cocoa powder. We're going to take our cream, turn the fire on and put it into the pan. So right now I have a half a cup of heavy cream and make sure it's always heavy cream, never half and half or milk or anything like that. This is what is referred to as ganache, chocolate ganache. As soon as this comes up to a boil here, we're going to take the hot cream, we're going to pour over our chocolate. So the cream is boiling. We're going to take that, pour it over top of our chocolate, you can see it immediately starts to melt, take a small spatula and just gently push it around and this is all it is to make a chocolate ganache which is the base for truffles. After this it's a matter of what you put in for flavorings. We're using champagne, it's two ounces into the ganache. We're going to incorporate that. Real champagne comes from the Champagne region of France. Anything else made from any other part of the world is referred to as sparkling wine. Alright now we just add a cognac and that's liquidy too. So we have to incorporate this into the chocolate until it smooths out. Alright so here's our chocolate ganache. It's been flavored with champagne and some cognac. Now the next thing that we have to do is we're just going to let this sit at room temperature for about an hour or so or maybe even an hour and a half depending on how warm your room is until this goes from being soft to something a little bit firmer that we can scoop out and roll into our truffles. Alright now we let it sit, I put it in the refrigerator for about an hour or so and now it's semi firm. So now it's pliable where I'm using like a teaspoon to scoop out little portions and then I roll them into our truffle set. And truffles aren't designed to be all symmetrical. You want to have them like in different shapes there, that's what makes it kind of fun. See how we're doing, see how pliable it is. If it sits in the refrigerator too long and it's too firm, you can always take it out and let it sit at room temperature again and that will help soften it up there but see how pliable that is? So I have a few of these started. Now what we're going to do is we're going to coat these. I have two things that we're going to coat them with today. I thought maybe we'd take a little bit of toasted almonds and coat them on the outside like that or we can also take cocoa powder. And those are two different types that you can work with. You can take toasted coconut and different kind of nuts too, hazelnuts or pistachios, anything like that can be fun but it's important that the outside is nice and soft so that when you roll it into the nuts here it sticks and adheres to it. When I used to work at The White House we had a lot of truffles I used to make in the pastry department during the Christmas season. That was a popular thing to have on your buffets. After you roll these, it's definitely nice just to leave them out at room temperature and serve in the evening of your event but if you are not going to use them for a couple of days and it's kind of warm you need to put them in the refrigerator. It's good to let them come out and set at room temperature so that chocolate becomes soft again. That's what makes truffles so special. Alright now I have them sitting on the plate from the Buchanan Administration and James Buchanan was from Lancaster, Pennsylvania which is my hometown. I'm John Moeller, former White House chef for three first families and author of "Dining at the White House" and that was how to make champagne truffles. Always remember, cook well and eat well.