Truffle Day.

No rain and a lot of sun today.

I had to buy some cream for the truffles so off I went to the shop before breakfast. With the sun glinting on the waves of course that involved a walk along the beach.

It was high tide forcing me to pick my way along the shingle, not as easy as walking on the sand. It was good to feel the sun and blow the cobwebs away. As I walked along the strand line I could see a lot of limpet shells, it's interesting to note the different things brought in by the varying sea conditions. There was also a dead sheep, which I didn't take a photo of, three very large tree stumps - at least six foot across, a number of pallets and a massive but worn timber beam. The problem with wood washed up on the beach is that it is often waterlogged and very heavy but when there is some especially good wood people come down with chainsaws to cut it into movable pieces. On my return I picked up a large mess of rope mixed with seaweed and dragged it up to the bins.

After breakfast I gave the mirror frame wood a coat of white paint and got everything ready for a truffle making session in the afternoon. That included making some salted caramel, the crunchy sort. I'd had some very nice salted caramel dark chocolate a while back and thought that might work for the truffles too. It took a little searching to find the method as most of the recipes on-line were for salted caramel sauce but eventually I found a video and it couldn't be simpler. Just pour some castor sugar on a baking sheet, add salt and heat in the oven for around 10 minutes or until the sugar melts so it does need keeping an eye on. When it has cooled down break into the required size which in my case was teeny tiny bits. Easy. Then it was time for our zoom class where I kept calling Peter Sion Corn (Father Christmas) because he was wearing a bright red fleece. Only seven of us today as people had other commitments. Having gone through the lesson and last week's homework on Monday made the lesson a lot better. However it was a bit disheartening to find out that in spoken Welsh fy (my) and the 1,2 or 3 letter change to the initial letter of the noun is generally replaced by a simple y. No wonder it's so hard to understand ordinary spoken Welsh (as opposed to carefully enunciated course resources).

Class over it was time to get down to making the truffle centres. Four kinds of dark chocolate truffles; walnut, crystallised ginger, salted caramel and raspberry. Once they were all  rolled and in the fridge I had a go at making white chocolate truffles. I like trying something different each year. These are all raspberry and because I had had enough of rolling the centres I put the ganache into chocolate moulds. I'll see what they set like and if they still need to be dipped in chocolate. If it works that's a lot easier than rolling the centres.