Clas Ohlson Praline & Ganache Truffle Making Kit plus Earl Grey Truffles Recipe

There’s something about getting shiny new kitchen equipment that just fills you with a certain type of joy. That gleaming metal, those foil containers for your finished product, all that potential all tied up in plastic wrapped and boxed items delivered to your home.

Even better than those things are for making chocolates! This Clas Ohlson Praline & Ganache Truffle Making Kit which I was sent isn’t just for the holidays – imagine making your own chocolates for the bake sale, for your valentine, with the kids at Easter, during summer holidays, in that dead time between Christmas and New Year’s Eve – there are so many times when doing something like making your own chocolates as a family would be perfect.

Now this “Praline Making Kit” from Clas Ohlson is really nice. It comes with the things you don’t always have handy in the kitchen for use with something else – including the wire mesh for drying chocolates with the smaller mesh. The fork is perfect with its long tines that are flattened at the ends and the lovely scoop for when you’re dipping your chocolates and need to fish them out. Fork for a dipped ganache and scoop for truffle balls dipped in chocolate.

The only trouble is that the chocolate bath with the convenient pouring spout is a bit shallow holding only 250mL of liquid *but* this means less wasted chocolate. Chocolate tempering isn’t easy and should be done with a thermometer but with a shallow bath like this you’ll use up less chocolate to get the perfect pool of liquid deliciousness. The spouts aren’t set too deeply into the bowl so you won’t get any accidental overflow and they are on both sides so no matter your surface area or kitchen restrictions you’ll still be able to easily pour out chocolate to cover whatever you’re working with.

This kit doesn’t come with any recipes so I thought I’d include an easy recipe below.  It should be noted that you will need more than the kit has in to to make these but the kit provides those tools you’ll need to work with in order to finish these off including little cones and cups for your finished products to make them look professional!

Earl Grey Truffles Recipe

175mL double cream
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces and softened
2 Earl Grey Tea bags (more if you love a strong flavour or without for plain ganache)
175g good to high quality chocolate, grated if possible
100g dark chocolate for coating final truffle (can also use cocoa powder)

Bring cream and butter to a boil in a small saucepan and stir in tea bags before taking off the heat and leaving the tea bags in there to steep for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Put the grated chocolate in a large bowl. Remove the tea bags from the cream and pour cream onto chocolate, whisking until smooth.

Once it is all melted and lovely, chill ganache, covered, until firm (about 2 hours). You can spread on a small baking sheet covered in plastic wrap if you’d like to cut into ganache squares.

When you’re ready to make the truffles, melt chocolate in the pan in the kit. Now, you don’t have to temper the chocolate but it is recommended. Melt around 80g of a 100g bar of dark chocolate in the pan in the kit over a larger pan of simmering water. Once it’s a liquid, remove the pan from the simmering water and the remaining chopped chocolate, use a thermometer and stir the chocolate until it reaches 32C.

Take a spoon of ganache smaller than those little foil cups so they don’t squish!) and place it on a cool surface or cut into squares. Roll each piece of ganache into a ball (dust your hands with cocoa powder or moisten with butter to prevent sticking) if you want ball truffles.

Drop several balls at a time into pan of melted chocolate and use fork to turn to coat. Use the swirl tool to remove truffle balls or fork to remove ganache squares. Place on wire rack to dry and remember to put grease-proof paper under it.

Place into the silver foil cups in the kit and make a lovely gift of them to a friend, family member or yourself!