My graham cracker obsession wasn’t going to just end with the banana cupcakes. Every year my mom makes a key lime pie from scratch, and every year I eat the graham cracker base and skip everything else. It drives her insane. But it got me to thinking: what else can I make to give me an excuse to shamelessly snack on buttered graham cracker crumbles? I decided to go for something unexpected yet salty, sweet and absurdly chocolatey: candy bars.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Okay, full disclosure: the BF and I don’t really celebrate Valentine’s Day, but we’re that rare sort of cynical couple that pisses everyone off when we claim that V-Day is kind of silly… so I feel like a Valentine’s Day recipe is still appropriate for the romantics out there.
There’s so much more to beer than the drinking (and poor decision) aid it’s known for. Cooking with beer lends a nice flavor to meats, and reduced beer is a great additive to baked goods. In this case, I reduced Young’s Double Chocolate Stout into a sweet syrup and added it to a creamy, semisweet ganache that made the perfect filling for a fun candy shell.
The best part about truffles is that once you make the basic ganache filling, you can coat them with whatever you want. As you can see in the picture, I tried a bunch of different combinations: (clockwise from top left) dark chocolate shell with gogi berries, dark chocolate/white chocolate swirl, white chocolate and ground espresso, white chocolate and crushed graham cracker, and dark chocolate/white chocolate with chopped walnuts.
These truffles are best started in the morning so that they have time to set - for perfect consistency, they’re best left in the fridge for a day or so. And you don’t have to make them for romantic holidays only - sometimes you just want to sit on your couch and drown your sorrows/happiness/apathy in chocolate, Peggy Bundy style. I’m not judging.
This recipe makes about 20 medium-sized truffles.
