Chocolate and stilton - an experiment

I was lounging on the sofa watching Heston Blumenthal again. It was How to cook like Heston, episode 5 about cheese. I love cheese, and I was learning lots of tips. It was then, in the middle of a recipe with stilton cheese, a peculiar sentence reached my ears. "Stilton goes marvellously well with chocolate", the slightly bonkers cook said and served the thing up on a chocolate biscuit. "What the...", I thought. I love stilton, I love chocolate, and now it turns out they are practically married! I felt like the great chef had spilt the beans on a secret so big that probably only the highest ranking eldest in the secret chef guild would know about it. Of course, a quick search on the internet revealed that this is a well know fact and that I probably was the only one who did not know.

Anyway, I started thinking about making a kind of a pre-dessert thingy in the shape of a stilton truffle. I am having some people in for Sunday, and I wanted to come up with something to serve before the dessert in stead of a normal cheese course.

Heston had mixed stilton and cream cheese. I immediately went to the kitchen and found a slab of stilton and a box of Philadelphia, mixed them at random, rolled spheres and covered them with cocoa powder. I then served one to my wife. That did not go down well. My wife thought she was getting a normal chocolate, and the rather overwhelming taste of ripe stilton cheese hit her like a ton of bricks.

Stilton truffle v 1.0 - failed.

So I needed a less pungent stilton mix. Also, v 1.0 had only a coating of cocoa powder which is rather bitter. A search for stilton and chocolate gave me this video

http://www.lovefood.com/guide/recipes/10663/port-and-stilton-truffles

These truffles are coated with dark chocolate and cocoa powder, but the filling is a ganache with cream, chocolate and stilton.

I wanted that the filling should only be cheese, but it would need to be less strong than the first one. Also, I thought that the whole thing needed a bit of sweetness since the chocolate cover would be 70% dark plus powder. In addition I wanted to add a centre of port. Port and chocolate is great. Port and stilton is great. Port, chocolate and stilton should be divine.

I ended up with a fifty-fifty mix of stilton and mascarpone. I had 100 grams of each. To this I added 6 grams of sugar. I cannot decide wether this was smart or not. During my testing phase, I found the fifty-fifty mix taken with the chocolate to be a bit harsh, but after making the final mix with sugar, I missed some of the tanginess. But now the sugar is there. I placed the mix in the freezer for a few minutes to firm up a bit before forming balls of it.

After making the balls, I placed them back in the freezer. After a few minutes, I took them out again and divided them in two using a sharp knife. And then, back in the freezer.

I could not use port in it natural state. I needed something thicker so that I would have at leased a small chance that the thing would stay in place long enough. On my packet of maltodextrine, there is a recipe for chocolates with a mint filling. The filling is mint liqueur mixed with malto. The recipe called for 30 grams of liqueur and 40 grams of maltodextrine. As you may remember from my post about my modernist caprese salad, I found that the brand of maltodextrine I have is different in strength from the tapioca matodextrine found in some other recipes, so this may be way off if you are trying to make it with tapioca malto. For that revipe I found that I needed around 5 times the amount of my malto compared to the tapioca malto based recipe.

I got out a bottle of port and measured out a bit more than 30 grams. I wanted to take the alcohol out of it so I boiled it for a couple of minutes. I then checked the weight again, and added a bit more to get back up to 30 grams. I then added 40 grams of malto and started mixing. I must say that I maltodextrine and I are not great friends. I had, as you have seen, difficulties with it in the caprese recipe, and it was fighting back here as well. It started clumping quite badly. But after grappling with it, mixing with a fork for some time, I got a fairly smooth, thickish port filling.

The plan was now to carve out small spaces in each half and fill
those with port using a syringe. So I got them out again and with a small knife, made small holes in each. I then sucked the now thickish port into the syringe and carefully administered a drop in each cavity. This actually went quite well. The port stayed more or less where it should. After this, I put the tray back in the freezer again.

Next time I got them out, I just put the two halves of each ball back together again, smearing some cheese around the cracks to try to seal them up. I had anticipated that filling the small rascals would be very difficult and messy, but as it turned out, it had been quite straight forward. I do think that putting them in the freezer for a few minutes between each step helped as it kept them quite firm throughout the process. Anyway, I had now some nice cheese balls with port filling. And now to the chocolate.

From the video about stilton truffles I linked to above, I learned that to melt and temper the chocolate, I should first melt it over a water bath, take it if the heat and then add 1/3rd more and let that melt and cool the molten chocolate. So I did. I then got the cheese balls out.

This is where it gets real messy. With my hand, I got one ball, dipped it and rolled it around in the molten chocolate and then put it in a bowl with cocoa powder. With my other hand, I made sure that the ball was nicely covered with the powder all over. This is really about getting your hands dirty. The good thing is that you can lick the dirt off afterwords.

So there they are, my stilton truffles with port fillings. Are they any good? I don't know. I will serve them to my panel of guests tomorrow and let them be the jury. From my small tastings during making them,I think they will work, but the real verdict will come tomorrow. I will keep you posted.