Thursday, October 18, 2007

Christmas Recipes: Edible Gifts. No, 4 of 8 - Chocolate Truffles

It's getting close to that time of year again, so here's a suitable featured article:

by: Paul Curran

Christmas recipe makes: 2 dozen
Calories per truffle: 65
Preparation time: 30 – 60 minutes
Cooking time: 0 minutes
Suitable for freezing

Christmas recipe ingredients:
Truffle Mixture:
chocolate, bitter, plain or milk 225g (8 oz)
double cream, 75 ml (3 fl oz)
brandy, 75 ml (3 fl oz)
or rum,orange liqueur, coffee liqueur, coconut liqueur
Rolled Truffles:
cocoa powder
chopped nuts
coconut, dessicated or grated
chocolate vermicelli or grated choclate for rolling
Dipped Truffles:
chocolate, plain, milk or white (350 g (12 oz)
or mixture of all three
Suitable for freezing.

Christmas recipe instructions:
1. Truffle Mixture: Add the cream to grated chocolate and melt in a bowl over water at boiling point, stirring until smooth. Allow to cool and thicken.

2. Add your alcohol of choice and whisk until the mixture is strong enough to stay 'up' when a strand of mixture is pulled up by the whisk. Then put the mixture into a shallow tin (covered) and cool till firm.

3. Rolled Truffles: Place teaspoonful size amounts of truffle mixture onto a tray sprinkled with cocoa powder and roll into ball shapes. Alternatively you can substitute the cocoa with grated chocolate, chopped nuts, coconut, or chocolate vermicelli. Cool in a refrigerator for at least two hours.

4. Dipped Truffles: Roll the truffle mixture into 2.5 cm (1 inch) size balls and freeze overnight until rock hard. [If you wish you could push some edible decor into the balls before cooling, such as nuts, ginger or cherries.]

5. Prepare some melted chocolate over water at boiling point. If you can, check the temperature is in the range 46-49 degrees centigrade (115-120 F) or for white chocolate, 43 degrees centigrade.

6. Taking two or three truffles at a time, use cocktail sticks to dip them into the melted chocolate before placing them on non-stick paper. Transfer to a refrigerator for cooling for at least two hours to harden. Repeat for the remaining truffles.

7. Present the truffles in paper cases and store in boxes. Keep in a refrigerator for up to ten days.

About The Author

(c) Paul Curran, CEO of Cuzcom Internet Publishing Group and webmaster at http://www.gifts-for-christmas.com, bringing you recipes and unique gifts for christmas including collectibles, russian gifts, cookies, jewelry.



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Monday, October 8, 2007

How To Begin Wine Collecting

Welcome back - here's today's featured article:

by: Dakota Caudilla

Some people collect wine for money…and some people collect wine because they have a passion for wine. Irregardless of whether you’re collecting wine for profit or for pleasure, collecting wine requires some investment. Enjoying wine is a completely different thing from collecting wine, bear this in mind.

When it comes to collecting wine, one of the most important thing to consider is where you’re going to keep the wine. A substantial portion of your investment towards your wine collection hobby is in ensuring that there’s a suitable place to store your wine. The motive is to ensure that the wine collection will increase in value, not decrease. Believe it or not, the storage and the way the wine is kept make a world of difference.

Wine that is kept, collected and protected in suitable condition will age nicely and will turn into vintage wines. However, if your wine collection is not properly cared for, well, you’ll know. The quality of the wine collection will deteriorate and a wine expert will be able to tell that your wine has been ill-treated.

First of all, do extensive research on the many different types of wines there are in the market. Some wines are meant to be kept and stored over a long period of time, some are not. Books on wine collection should be bought and if you’re at all serious about wine collection, spend some time reading through them and understand the different types of wines and the way that they should be kept. If keeping and reading books on wine is not your ‘glass of wine’, you can do your research on the internet. Either way, there’s a wealth of information on wine that you can find. Explore, absorb and remember.

Once you understand the way each type of wine should be kept, it’s time for you to design and construct the place where your wine is to be kept. This depends on the kind of wine you intend to keep there, of course.

And after you’ve built your wine ‘cellar’ (bear in mind, sometimes, wine cellars are not necessarily built in cellars), you should start purchasing wine; wine that you like. One basic thing to remember is that wine is differentiated with the provenance of the vintage. The better the storage, the better the quality. The better the quality, the higher the price. Before you buy wine, ask the seller for an authentic certificate. This may sound so trivial but it’s important if you want to know and be sure that you’re purchasing high quality wine. This is especially important if you’re making a bulk purchase of the wine.

In collecting wine, you would want to strive for a balance between New Age wine from Australia and Chile and with Old World Wine from Europe. Bear in mind that ready-to-drink wine is not suitable for long-term safekeeping. Dessert wine is also best opened and consumed within a short period of time. Know the difference before you start collecting wine.

About The Author

Dakota Caudilla, journalist, and website builder Dakota Caudilla lives in Texas. He is the owner and co-editor of http://www.creative-cooking.com on which you will find a longer, more detailed version of this article.



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