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South Florida Sun-SentinelQ. What can I do with chocolate truffles that have melted? I have about 2 pounds of them. Can I bake with it? I tried to use it as icing on a cake. I melted it down in the microwave oven, put it on a cooled down cake. When I cut a piece, it separated from the cake. It was candy again. What can I do with this other than just eating it, which I don't want to do?
— Shirley Shmilowitz,
Tamarac
A. A call to our dear friend Jean-Louis Gerin, maitre cuisinier de France and owner of Restaurant Jean-Louis located in Greenwich, Conn., and we had an answer for Shmilowitz.
According to Jean-Louis, the first problem comes from keeping the truffles too long. They should be eaten or used within 3 weeks or at the very most a month. Truffles lose fat content the longer they are kept.
To reconstitute those fat-deprived truffles, Jean-Louis suggests adding oil back into the basic melted candy. He mentions heavy cream, butter, oil, vegetable shortening or even a combination of heavy cream and one of the fats. (The exact amount of the fat cannot be given, but begin with small amounts.)
Make sure you use a heavy saucepan and low heat and never let the mixture boil. After everything has melted together, let the mixture cool slightly, then use a food processor fitted with the metal blade or a stand mixer with the whisk attachment to process or beat the mixture well.
Pour the mixture into paper-lined mini muffin cups to emulate the original small truffles. Or you can try using your reconditioned truffles experimentally, such as in a frosting.
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