Cream Liqueur Chocolates

“Cream liqueur and white chocolate for sweet sumptuousness.”

Cream Liqueur Chocolates

Ingredients

  • 700g couverture white chocolate (400g for shells, 200g for ganache)
  • 200ml Baileys or Amarula Cream liqueur
  • Coloured cocoa butter for decoration (optional)

Makes approx. 80 large chocolates.

Inspiration

If you want to do something different with your cream liqueur, then try this recipe. It’s proven to be the most popular chocolate I’ve made.

Shell Student

When I originally made these, I was just looking for more practice making shells with moulds. After a number of failed attempts, I wanted to try the coloured cocoa butter for decoration. I honestly wasn’t too worried about what to use as the ganache – it wasn’t important. This was because I just wanted to be sure I could get the shells right.

Decoration

Coloured cocoa butter really can make chocolates look a lot more appealing. There are a just a handful of videos online that explain how to use it. I’ll probably cover this in another post some day. It’s available in preprepared form in little bottles of pre-tempered cocoa butter, and is solid at room temperature. Very much like chocolate, you need to melt it and then temper it again. Fortunately, the process of doing this is more straightforward. This involves heating it for short bursts in a microwave (to melt it), and shaking it (to re-temper it). You’re looking to achieve a temperature of no higher than 40C.

Colour choice

For the Baileys, simply smudge a little gold cocoa butter into the mould with your index finger. This gives a subtle but visible effect. Amarula Cream is altogether more exotic, so something more striking works best. For that, using both red and green smudges appeared very bold in the moulds before filling the shells.

Guessing the ganache

Ok I’ll admit it. Originally, I was guessing with the ganache. I simply took 300ml of Baileys, and warmed it very gently. This is done to avoid the ganache cooling too quickly. If that happens, it can be harder to get it into the shells and flood them properly.

Next up, which chocolate to pair with the liqueur? White makes an ideal colour for the ganache – it mixes with the cream liqueur to make a rich light brown middle. This really suits the style of this chocolate. The shells I used were quite large, and most people bit into them first to reveal the middle.

Measures

So what about quantities? Well, I guessed at equal measure of both chocolate and liqueur. This worked for me, but if you prefer, you can make a more subtle flavour by using more chocolate. If you’re not driving anywhere for a while, try the ganache before you pipe it. If you’re using my measures, it will be STRONG. Be aware – the shells add a little more chocolate to the mix and help to balance out the flavour a little more. That said, you may find you want to tone them down with a bit less liqueur. For me, I’m sure I’d make them the same way again.

The result was sweet, very alcoholic and very popular!

Instructions

This one really is as simple as it gets, but requires the use of polycarbonate chocolate moulds.

The moulds I was using here were 30g per chocolate (which is quite big). Yours may differ, so adjust acoordingly. If you get the shells right with this, the good thing is that you can’t really go wrong with the ganache.

Shells

  1. Temper 500g of the white chocolate (for the shells and the ganache).
  2. Take each mould and smudge the interior with the coloured cocoa butter colours of your choice.
  3. Allow to set at room temperature for a few minutes.
  4. Flood mould with white chocolate and empty.

Ganache

  1. While the shells are setting at room temperature, add the liqueur to the remaining tempered white chocolate, and stir to combine it. Don’t stir too quickly – you don’t want to add air to the ganache.
  2. When the ganache has cooled to below 24C, pipe it into the shells, and allow them to cool to room temp again.
  3. Put the moulds in the fridge for 30 minutes. This will help the white chocolate separate from the mould.
  4. Remove from the fridge, cover and leave at room temperature for 12 hours to allow a ganache crust to form.
  5. Temper the remaining white chocolate, and cap of the shells. Allow to set completely at room temperature.

Next Time

Can’t think of anything I’d do differently. These came out just right.