Wishing a Happy Diwali to my family and friends!
In case you are curious what Diwali is, it is a five day festival of lights, sweets, fireworks and gifts celebrated in India. In India, Diwali is celebrated on the scale of Christmas in the West. People light oil lamps and hang beautiful paper lanterns called "Kandils". People meet up with family and friends to celebrate and exchange presents. On one of the days of the festival people pray to the Goddess of wealth and prosperity, Lakshmi. During this festival people buy gold and silver jewelry to welcome prosperity into their homes. Some of the communities celebrate the beginning of their New Year on this Sunday. It is beautiful, colorful and noisy (kids liking to set off noise-making fireworks). To read more about Diwali here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali. And if you google Diwali images, you will see some very beautiful decorations.
For my Diwali celebrations I made chocolate truffles. Here's my recipe. These are hand rolled truffles so you can make them any size you like. I rolled them to a decent size and got about 50 truffles from these proportioned ingredients. Also I mix bittersweet chocolate and milk chocolate, I think this mix makes a delicious truffle.
Ingredients:
28 ounces of chocolate (I had 1.16 of Callebaut milk chocolate and .61 ounces of bittersweet Scharffen Berger)
1 cup heavy cream
1 tbsp + 2 tsp of orange extract
Shredded coconut, as much as you like (I used about 5 tbsp), optional
Unsweetened cocoa powder to roll the truffle in.
Steps:
1. Shave the chocolate with a grater, or chop it with a knife or a food processor.
2. Boil the cream.
3. Pour the boiling cream over the shaved chocolate, this will melt the chocolate.
4. Mix in the orange extract.
5. Mix in the shredded coconut.
6. Cool in the refrigerator for at least 2 hrs (it should have the texture of soft clay).
7. Now scoop out the chocolate with a spoon or melon baller and roll into balls. Roll each ball in cocoa powder to coat it with cocoa. (Once I roll out the truffles I place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.)
8. Chill in the freezer.
Enjoy! And if you want to have more fun substitute the orange extract with a liqueur.