Recipe 29: Goat Cheese-Honey-Pear Truffles

As bummed out as I am to miss out on partaking in Eat My Blog 4.0 (having volunteered for the previous three) due to a previously-planned excursion, I'm glad to at least be able to contribute something. Hopefully if you bought one of the Goat Cheese-Honey-Pear Truffles, you enjoyed eating them as much as I did making them.

And to let you in on a little secret . . . these impressive, intensely-flavored little gems are amazingly easy to make! Requiring only five ingredients and less than an hour of actual prepwork, I hope these treats make your gift-giving, or bakesale-contributing, repetoire!

Ingredients (for approximately 50 bite-sized truffles):

6 oz. creamy goat cheese (salted is OK, in fact, I rather like the tinge of savoriness!)

12 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chunks (I used Trader Joe's Pound-Plus bar)

2 Tbsp. honey

2 Tbsp. pear liqueur/brandy (I used Mathilde, leftover from my Autumnal Mulled Wine)

1/2 cup unsweetened powdered cocoa, sifted (if you don't like in-your-face bitterness of straight-on cocoa, you can sift in some powdered sugar too.)

Directions

1. Cream together the goat cheese, honey and pear liqueur until thoroughly incorporated (it will be kind of runny, that's OK)

2. Over low heat of a stove and a watchful eye, melt the bittersweet chocolate chunks, stirring constantly to prevent burning (Tip: Be sure to the saucepan is completely devoid of water and that no water touches the melting chocolate, or you'll get a grainy seized mess!)

3. Once chocolate is melted, pour gently over the goat cheese mixture and fold to incorporate; it will have the feel of a brownie batter.

4. Cover with plastic wrap and let it chill for at least 2 hours (I used that time to sift my cocoa powder, clean my cooking supplies and enjoyed a beer.)

5. Take the chilled ganache of the fridge and use a spoon to pop out teaspoon-sized dollops, use your hands to mold them into sphere-ish truffles (the warmth from your palms and fingers will instantly make the ganache rather pliable), then roll in cocoa powder.

6. Serve or store in fridge (I prefer eating them just a touch colder than room temp.)