I may not be big on Valentine’s Day, but if it’s nothing else, it’s an excuse to make these lovelies: Dark Chocolate/Red Wine Truffles. Sweets for your sweetie! Or sweets to bemoan your lack of a sweetie, or sweets because you’re totally awesome and confident whether or not you have a sweetie, or whatever other excuse you want to use! And besides, they’re very easy.

Ingredients

• 16 oz dark chocolate, chopped (chocolate chips work too, semi- or bitter-sweet, I prefer 60-70% cocoa)
• 1/2 c heavy/whipping/double cream
• 1/2 c red wine
• 2tbsp butter, cut into small chunks
• Optional: Cocoa powder, chocolate for tempering, whatever other things you want to use to make it pretty!

Put the chocolate in a heat-proof bowl. Boil the cream in a small saucepan, when it hits a boil, pour it over the chocolate and let it sit. Heat up the wine (microwave’s fine), not to a boil, just too hot to drink, and pour that in the bowl as well. Then get to stirring! It will look a little chunky at first, don’t worry about it. Add the butter, and keep stirring until it’s smooth and glossy. Make sure there’s no unmelted chocolate chunks, you want smooth truffles, not chunky one. At this point it’s ganache, if you want to use it as frosting or some such, go for it!

The next step is waiting for it to cool into the right consistency, you can try to do this at room temp, but it’s easier in the fridge. It’ll take a little while, an hour or so, for it to thicken up. Once it’s solid (doesn’t move when you tip the bowl), you get to shape & decorate! Use a melon baller or a spoon to scoop out a ball of the ganache. Use your hands to shape it into a ball, I recommend using latex gloves to do this if you can, as the ganache will melt from the heat of your hands and make quite a mess. Try to resist the urge to make them really huge, these little guys are pretty potent, you don’t want them to be overwhelming. After that, you have options. The first option is roll it in cocoa and count yourself done.

Option two is a little trickier, but can really be worth it: the chocolate coated truffles. For this, you either need chocolate intended for candy-making (as you don’t have to temper it), or you have to temper normal chocolate. If you don’t temper the chocolate, the chocolate will melt at room temperature, and look dull and possibly sweat, which is not terribly sexy. However, tempered chocolate will be fine at room temp and will look a lot nicer. If you fail at tempering chocolate, don’t worry, it’s still edible, just make sure you keep it in the fridge. There’s tempering info here and here, the first explanation is great for the science, second link is more to-the-point and has a better description for seeding. If you do this, after rolling the balls of ganache, dip them in the tempered chocolate and put them on some parchment to cool. While the chocolate is still tacky, you can add sprinkles, chopped nuts, cocoa, colored powdered sugar, whatever your little heart desires!