After making that delectable Chinese 5 Spice Roast Chicken I wanted to try something really different. I already knew five-spice powder was good with meat and seafood, but how about a chocolate dessert? And not just any chocolate confection, but what is probably my favorite: truffles. Good thing I stumbled upon this Chinese Five Spice Chocolate Truffles recipe. I was instantly intrigued and knew I had to try this recipe!
These Chinese Five Spice Chocolate Truffles are a unique and incredibly simple dessert. Just four ingredients create a delicious and decadent truffle.
The Ingredients
One of the things I immediately noticed and loved about this recipe was that it has only four ingredients. That’s right, four ingredients. I even had two on hand, the Chinses five-spice powder and the unsweetened cocoa.
That left me needing to shop for the cream and the chocolate. A half-pint container of heavy cream and a bag of bittersweet chocolate chips for just under $10 and I had everything I needed for this recipe.
The Process
There weren’t a lot of steps to this recipe, but having to chill the chocolate mixture a couple of times did slow things down. It more or less divided the process into a few long steps:
- 29 minutes to make the chocolate ganache
- 2 hours to chill the chocolate ganache
- 15 minutes to make the truffles*
- 4 minutes to roll the truffles in cocoa powder
- 2 hours 48 minutes (*overnight chilling of truffles not included)
Making the chocolate ganache didn’t go so smoothly for me. The first problem came up when I strained the cream and five-spice mixture using a mesh sieve. My sieve wasn’t fine enough, and it really didn’t strain out the spice powder. I had to strain it a second time with a piece of cheesecloth lining the sieve to get most of the five-spice powder out.
The next issue was trying to melt the chocolate. The cream mixture must have cooled too much since I had to strain it twice, and it barely melted the chocolate. I ended up having to add the cream and half-melted chocolate to a clean saucepan to fully melt it.
I used a measuring spoon (the teaspoon size) to scoop the chilled ganache into balls, and the first few came out nicely. As I went on, though, I found I needed to roll the balls in my hands to (try) and make them round. The recipe’s author was right about the heat from my hands melting them, and I made a big mess. And I worked so fast that I didn’t exactly make them all perfectly round. I managed to get a few ovals and miscellaneous lopsided shapes. Sigh. At least the shape didn’t affect the taste.
But, I’m happy to say, that after refrigerating the truffles overnight, rolling them in the cocoa powder was easy. I added about a tablespoon of cocoa to a small mixing bowl. Then I popped the truffles in 3-4 at a time and swirled the bowl until they were coated.
