Recipe: BB-8 and BB-9E Chocolate Truffles
Are we all looking forward to The Last Jedi? I certainly am. I've been keeping an eye on twitter and seeing pictures and spoiler-free vague reviews coming in from the premiere. I've got my ticket bought and Star Wars bingo card filled out.
And while I'm definitely looking forward to seeing favorites Luke & Leia, plus newbies Rey, Finn and Poe again, we all know who the real hero of this franchise is now, right?
I am, of course, talking about my favorite droid, BB-8. Honestly, I'm a little disappointed in myself that I haven't made anything BB-8 inspired before now. I've made truffles before, making use of a chocolate temper machine that I received one year for Christmas, and the round shape of hand-rolled truffles seemed ideal for making a
BB-8 inspired treat.
Plus, now that we know about BB-9E, you can make either dark chocolate or white chocolate truffles, depending on your taste. Or go crazy and make both! Warning, though, there's a lot of time required for these, most of it on the decoration, so if you don't have a day to set aside for chocolate-making, maybe stick to just one.
The method for making both truffles is actually the same, the only difference is the ingredients, so I'm going to list the ingredients for each and then one set of directions. Also, don't worry, I've included options for those of you who may not have a tempering machine or don't want to bother with tempering by hand.
Ready? Let's get to the recipes!
BB-8 White Chocolate Peppermint Truffles
12 oz. white chocolate chips
1/3 cup heavy cream
1/8 teaspoon peppermint oil
12 oz. tempered white chocolate or vanilla candy coating, melted according to package directions
orange and gray colored royal icing
BB-9E Dark Chocolate Truffles
10 oz. dark chocolate chips
1/3 cup heavy cream
pinch of salt
12 oz. tempered dark chocolate or dark chocolate candy coating, melted according to package directions
gray colored royal icing
Directions
Add chocolate chips to a microwave safe bowl. In a small saucepan, heat the cream until simmering, not boiling. Remove from heat and add to the chocolate chips. Allow the hot cream to sit for 2 minutes to melt the chocolate, then mix until chocolate is fully melted and cream is incorporated. If after some time mixing, the chocolate is not fully melted, you can microwave it in 30 second increments at 50% power and stir until done. Mix in the peppermint or salt, cover the warm ganache with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight.
Remove the bowl from the fridge and scoop out tablespoon-sized rounds by scraping along the surface of the ganache (it will be too hard to scoop in one go - think of it more like scooping ice cream). Set your scoops on a wax-paper lined plate or cookie sheet. Roll most of your scoops between your palms into a perfect sphere (you can wear gloves for this part to avoid chocolate-hands). For 2-3 of your scoops, divide into 4 equal parts and roll those into smaller spheres. Each of these will be 2 heads (8 heads per scoop), so you can count how many heads you'll need to match your droid bodies.
If your ganache gets too warm to roll while you're working, refrigerate for 30 minutes to firm them up. With your spheres made, refrigerate for another hour.
Now melt/temper you coating chocolate. Remove the ganache spheres from the fridge and dip each chilled sphere in the melted chocolate. Remove from the chocolate with a fork and tap tap TAP over the chocolate bowl to remove excess chocolate and smooth out the coating. Use a toothpick help remove your truffle from the fork and onto wax paper. Use the toothpick to score around the chocolate where the excess is pooling underneath (this will make it easier to remove after it dries). For the heads, cut each small sphere into 2 sphere halves, coat and dry with the flat side down on the wax paper.
When dry, remove the excess chocolate from the heads and use a little more melted chocolate to attach them to the bodies.
To decorate, first, you can use something in a circular shape, like the back of a decorating tip, to imprint the truffles with circles all around and help direct your icing. Usually I think it's fine just to snip the end off a plastic bag for icing, but this is pretty delicate work, so I suggest you do use a #2 decorating tip with your plastic bag this time. Make the circles around the body of each truffle before filling them in with another color and adding the eye with a dab of gray icing and a black dragee.