Saturday, June 21, 2008

Recipe Review: Saffron White Chocolate Truffles

Alternately titled "The time I found out my kitchen scale can't measure fractions of grams."

Seeing as my mom has come for a visit this weekend, I've been trying out all sorts of new recipes (as well as pulling out the old favorites) so that I can finally convince the woman that I know how to cook. Apparently she needed to see it to believe it.

Anyway, I decided to try out these interesting looking truffles in honor of her visit. Fortunately I had gotten a large jar of saffron at CostCo for a very reasonable price a few years back, as otherwise this recipe would be quite expensive. As I was trying to measure out the necessary half gram of saffron (don't let that comma fool you), I found out that my scale can't measure a half gram of anything. How inconvenient! So, I would up using a large pinch of saffron. I also managed to screw up the order of the recipe by throwing everything in the saucepan instead of just heating the cream and other ingredients and then adding them to a separate bowl of chocolate, which resulted in a longer cooling time and a softer texture. In the end, though, it was the taste that did this recipe in for me. Maybe I put in too much saffron, maybe the saffron should have been ground instead of left as threads, or maybe it is just that I'm not the biggest fan of white chocolate, but I didn't really care for them (this being said, I'm still looking forward to trying the same woman's recipe for maya gold truffles).

They are, however, very tasty in muffin form. Inspired by these Cadbury Creme Egg muffins, I decided to make some saffron white chocolate truffle muffins of my own. I added a little bit of melted truffle to the batter and then placed chunks of truffle in the uncooked muffins, but I think it would still be pretty tasty if you only added melted truffle to the batter.

Saffron White Chocolate Truffle Oatmeal Muffins
Oatmeal muffin recipe adapted from Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book

1. Preheat oven to 400* F. Grease twelve muffin cups or use paper baking cups. Set aside.

2. In a medium bowl, combine flour, oats, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

3. In another bowl combine egg, milk, and cooking oil. Add liquid ingredients all at once to dry ingredients and stir until moist. Melt a truffle or two in the microwave and mix resulting liquid into muffins.

4. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups. Place marble-sized piece of truffle into each muffin cup. Bake for 18-20 minutes or until golden and a wooden toothpick comes out clean. Cool muffins on a wire rack and serve warm.

2 comments:

Chris said...

You know that I am going to try these!

Teacher Anonymous said...

Good luck! They're not too difficult to make, but being something of a dark chocolate purist, I don't think I was the intended audience. I am enjoying the muffins for breakfast, though.