Growing up my dad would make chocolate truffles, flavored with a range of alcohols and fruit extracts. These are tasty, but I've been interested in making ones that have less of a liquor flavor. This time last year I made some with freeze-dried raspberries, which I think came out well. I continue to like those a lot, but this year wanted to try some additional flavors.

The first new flavor I tried was strawberry: freeze-dried powder from strawberries instead of raspberries. Unfortunately I didn't realize until well into the process that the flavor of strawberries is much more subtle, which meant I needed a kind of absurd quantity of strawberry powder. While my raspberry truffles were about 4% raspberry powder, I got my strawberry ones up to 27% (500g chocolate, 225g cream, 270g strawberry) before the flavor became clearly noticeable above the chocolate. And even then, the flavor is less interesting than the raspberry, and more artificial feeling. Adding this large a quantity also meant I ended up with a gummier texture than I prefer, though it's interesting for variety. None of these will be going to waste, though I probably also won't make them again.

The second new flavor I tried was orange, and I think this was much more successful. I added orange zest to cream, heated to just below boiling, let it steep for 20min, and then sieved it out before using the cream to make ganache. I used 18g of zest for 500g of chocolate and 250g of cream. While this doesn't sound like much (2% by weight) it's eight Cara Cara oranges worth, and has quite a strong flavor. I also added about 20g of freeze-dried orange powder, though I'm not sure this was worth it: I think I like the darker more bitter flavor of just the zest a bit better. I liked how these came out a lot, and will definitely be doing them again.

As in past years, it was fun to do them with the kids:

(I've also stopped using the freezer—thanks Claude—which fixed my occasional issues with condensation getting water in the chocolate and causing seizing.)