Who Put the Dip in the Dip Di Dip Di Dip?

Me, that's who.

White chocolate dips are much easier than when I use dark bittersweet chocolate. Those take a special machine with pinpoint temperature control and a motor to spin the bowl and keep the molten chocolate moving.

With white chocolate I take some big bars of white that are left over from my last dip, chop them coarsely, add in some extra buttons for bulk, microwave 30 seconds, stir, and repeat that until it's smooth.

 



 

 

I also melted a little extra in a coffee cup and hit that with a couple drops of green gel food coloring.

The decoration I use on the truffle not only tells me what flavoring it is, by using a fork to make stripes over the truffle I prevent getting fingerprints all over the shell when I handle it later.

The decoration scheme I am using is this:

Rum infusion only: White stripes
Rum infusion with lime zest: a pinch of lime zest and white stripes
Rum infusion and lime flavoring: green stripes
Rum infusion, lime flavoring, and lime zest: a pinch of lime zest and green stripes

You can spend lots of money, $18 to 20 apiece for specialized dipping forks.

That's a cheap stainless steel fork I bought at the local battered women's shelter thrift store. Then I bent the two middle tines back. It works better than the expensive ones.

The balls of chilled ganache get brought out of the fridge and dipped into the melted white chocolate, then they go onto a simple plastic cutting board that is covered with butcher paper.

When they are all dipped, they go back into the fridge to firmly set the shell.

The next two flavors get dipped and decorated.

Then with a super sharp knife, the excess chocolate from the dip is trimmed off, and they are boxed by eights in plastic deli boxes I buy at the local restaurant supply. My mother and a few other folks used to always rag on me for not getting more into the packaging.

"A nice box, more decorative, and something besides those paper 2oz souffle cups you use to put them in. It would just look so much nicer."

I thought about it for a while, and talked with other people. Then, my Uncle, Mom's brother, who is a very successful and sharp business type guy asked me the big question:

"What are you selling? Truffles? Or boxes?"

So I just stayed with cheap, disposable, and easy to source.

The last step, besides the dishes of course, is to take the trimmings and vacuum seal them for later use in cookies and stuff like that. The trimmings got named "truffle stuffle" by the family kids.

Some good friends are coming over later tonight to do a taste testing. A box with 2 each of the flavors goes to some neighbors and other local friends.

Then we wait. I've tasted them all and I have my thoughts on it, but I've learned that the opinions of others matter greatly.