I love making truffles, so much so in fact that a few years back I seriously contemplated running away to France to study under a world renowned chocolatier. Even though I never took that leap, I still enjoy creating my own chocolate creations. I really don't like flavoring my truffles with artificial flavors, extracts, and liquors like you see in most recipes, so I've had to find ways to infuse the truffles using fresh ingredients, resulting in truer flavors. One of the greatest challenges I've had was when I wanted to make Mexican chocolate truffles. For those of you who don't know, Mexican chocolate is a type of drinking chocolate typically flavored with almond and cinnamon that comes in round discs. This chocolate is not ideal for confections, since it contains ground almonds, giving it a grainy consistency which doesn't make for a good truffle center, so I needed a way to flavor plain chocolate with the almond and cinnamon. Cinnamon was easy, finding a way to impart a true, natural almond flavor was a bit trickier. Almond extract wasn't going to cut it so, after a bit of experimenting, I settled on using almond paste, a slightly sweetened concoction made from real almonds which will dissolve in hot cream (do not confuse almond paste with marzipan, which is heavily sweetened and will not work well in this recipe).

These truffles are fairly easy to make and, with the hint of cinnamon, would be an ideal homemade treat for your special someone on Valentines Day.

Mexican Chocolate Truffles
9 oz of good quality dark chocolate, chopped (I prefer Valrhona if I have the extra cash, or Guittard)
2/3 cup of heavy whipping cream
1/2 a vanilla bean
1 tbsp of almond paste
1 tsp of ground cinnamon
Cocoa powder or chopped almonds to finish

1. Place chopped chocolate in a medium heatproof bowl and set aside. Place cream in small, heavy bottom saucepan with almond paste and cinnamon. Split the vanilla bean in half lengthwise and scrap the inner seeds out with the knife. Place the bean and seeds into the pot of cream. Heat mixture to a light boil on medium heat, stirring frequently.
2. Once the cream begins to boil, remove from heat and let sit for 5 minutes. Stir well to insure that all of the almond paste has fully dissolved. Strain out the vanilla bean and return cream to the burner and bring back up to a boil.
3. Pour hot cream over chopped chocolate and stir until all chocolate has melted and mixture is smooth. Put ganache (chocolate mixture) in the fridge until it has completely cooled and becomes thick, approximately 1 hour.
4. Remove chocolate from fridge. Roll about 1 teaspoon of ganache between your hands to form balls (I would highly recommend wearing gloves for this, as the ganache will become warm and melt on your hands, making a huge mess). Roll the balls in either cocoa powder or chopped almonds. If you are using cocoa powder, place truffles in a mesh sieve afterward and shake to remove excess cocoa.

• To coat the truffles in chocolate-after rolling the balls (skipping the cocoa or almond coating), place onto a wax paper lined baking sheet and place back in the fridge for 30 minutes. Temper 5 oz of dark chocolate and dip the ganache balls into the chocolate, completely coating the ganache, then place back onto the wax papered baking sheet. Let sit until chocolate coating is completely set.
• To make molded truffles-before beginning the ganache, temper chocolate and coat the inside of truffle molds. Let sit until chocolate is completely set. At step 3, leave ganache at room temperature to cool slightly (do not place in fridge). Fill pipping bag with cooled ganache and pipe into truffle molds, leaving a little head-space at the top. Temper additional chocolate and place into another pipping bag. Pipe melted chocolate into molds to seal the truffles. Allow to cool completely before unmolding.