*truffle shuffle.

This one's a CLIFFHANGER. A two-day process. A labor of ... chocolate. It seems ridiculous that something so dense and sweet would be named after a dirt-clogged fungus that's ... also dense and sweet. Mmmmmmmmmmmtruffles...

Oh! Hello there. Back to the task at hand. Ingredients:



4 ounces of bittersweet chocolate + 4 ounces of semisweet chocolate + 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt + 2/3 cup whipping cream + 1/3 cup sugar = well, I'm bad at math. But get this: I learned something!

Ok, catch your breath.

Turns out, if you have four ingredients, the way to make them spectacular is to manipulate them and then introduce them in stages. Sort of like dating. Or so I hear. Thanks to the remarkable Grandmother H., I have a terrific double boiler, into which went the chocolates. The recipe calls for either kind, but because it's my 5 billionth single Valentine's Day in row, I decided a combination of bitter and less than sweet was the way to go.



Although... ladies? Feeling blue on the day o' male forgetfulness and pressurized romance-making? Fill the house with the scent of melting chocolate. You'll be fighting off that creepy guy who walks laps around the woodside—wearing a wind suit and 1986 headphones while smoking a cigarette—in no time.

Don't even think about it. He's mine.



This is where things got a little hinky (do you see a pattern developing?). Sugar dissolved over medium heat, until things became an amber sort of hue:



The word "amber" always makes me think of Jurassic Park. Then again, I'm kind of a nerd. And there's a chance that may be a factor in the 6 billionth single Valentine's Day ...



Then the cream goes in, at which point caramel forms. Or ... brown ... sugar ... soup? I wasn't sure the consistency was quite right. But I decided caramelized sugar and cream could not really be a bad addition to anything.

I stirred the BS soup into the melted chocolate, and took perhaps the most drunken photograph of it possible. Minus the alcohol, plus extra blurriness.

I am on FIRE with the math here tonight, gentleladies.

Then into the fridge to chill while I tried out Hacienda, the Mexican restaurant that just opened up on the woodside.

Verdict:

thumbs up—salsa, cleanliness, location
thumbs down—saltiness, low (not short person friendly) seats, and sheer WATTAGE.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure location trumps all that, but I'm afraid that just means I'll be close to home and blind.

Then I returned to roll truffles in cocoa powder and chill overnight.



Truffle count? 25. Supposed to make? 32.

I hate math.

Tune in tomorrow for the rich dark chocolate conclusion!