Easter means chocolate. It also means a long weekend of beering
(that’s what it means for me, anyway). It’s also a fine time to bring beer
and chocolate together and make truffles. The good thing for this recipe is
that once you know the basic way of making the truffles you can pimp them with
whatever beer and chocolate you want.
The basic Beer
Chocolate Truffle recipe
Makes 10-20 truffles
100ml double cream
100ml beer
25g butter
Pinch of salt
200g dark chocolate (or 400g if it’s white or milk)
Something to roll the truffles in
Gently warm the cream, beer, butter and salt in a pan but
don’t let it boil. Remove from the heat and mix in the chocolate, stirring
until it melts. Put in a bowl and place in the fridge to allow the mixture to
cool and set. When ready to go, use a melon-baller or two spoons to create the
round truffle shapes and then roll in cocoa powder, ground roasted barley (this
works really well if you can get some), crushed toasted nuts or desiccated
coconut. Then eat.
If you want to make these with milk or white chocolate then
the recipe changes slightly and you need more chocolate to liquid. So a mix of
100ml cream and 100ml beer requires about 400g of chocolate.
Here are 10 of my favourite combinations
Cherry beer and dark chocolate – you can also add dried sour
cherries to it
Simply imperial stout and dark chocolate which combines nicely
to make the mix extra rich
Get spicy with dark or milk chocolate, dried chilli flakes
and cardamom, plus coffee stout
Go Belgian with milk chocolate and quadrupel, perhaps also
adding some cinnamon or quad-soaked raisins
Weizenbock with white chocolate and rolled in toasted
hazelnuts
Double IPA and white chocolate, plus a teaspoon of honey,
then rolled in coconut is really good
An unexpectedly delicious combo is milk chocolate and
Rauchbier, giving the equivalent of chocolate covered bacon. A pinch of smoked
salt helps boost it all
Black IPA, dark chocolate and orange zest is superb
Recreate PB&J with dark chocolate, a tablespoon of
crunchy peanut butter and some raspberry beer. Roll this one in crushed salted
pretzels
Bourbon barrel-aged stout with milk or dark chocolate and
rolled in coconut is like an adult version of a Bounty bar
This recipe (and the photo at the top) is from my new book, Beer and Food. It’s out on
15 May and you can pre-order it online - below are 10 sample pages. I’m really excited for this book to be released – it’s about the best of beer and food together, there’s some science
to how and why beer works well, there’s ideas for pairings, plus a few recipes
using beer in them.
