Chocolate truffles

Anyone who has been into SugarPop's knows about our chocolate truffle case. It is filled with beautifully decorated and rich chocolate truffles of all kinds! Any chocolate connoisseur is familiar with the different shapes, sizes, and taste of truffles, but did you know that size, shape, and filling helps differentiate between three very different types of truffles?

This rich and delicious treat is thought to be first created by N. Petrucelli in Chambéry, France in 1895. His truffles became popular with the public with the establishment of Prestat chocolate shop in London by Antoine Dufour in 1902. Today there are three main types of chocolate truffles: American, European, and Swiss:

The "American truffle" is a half-egg shaped chocolate-coated truffle, a mixture of dark or milk chocolates with butterfat and, in some cases, hardened coconut oil. Joseph Schmidt, a San Francisco chocolatier, and founder of Joseph Schmidt Confections, is credited with its creation in the mid-1980s.
"Sweet surrender", Los Angeles Times, February 8, 2006

The "European truffle" is made with syrup and a base made up of cocoa powder, milk powder, fats, and other such ingredients to create an oil-in-water type emulsion.


The "Swiss truffle" is made by combining melted chocolate into a boiling mixture of dairy cream and butter, which is poured into molds to set before sprinkling with cocoa powder. Like the French truffles, these have a very short shelf-life and must be consumed within a few days of making.
Chocolate, Cocoa, and Confectionery: Science and Technology by Bernard W. Minifie (1999), page 545.

Along with these three main types of truffles there are also various other kind of truffles: 

The "California truffle" is a larger, lumpier version of the French truffle, first made by Alice Medrich in 1973 after she tasted truffles in France. She sold these larger truffles in a charcuterie in the "Gourmet Ghetto" neighborhood of Berkeley, then in 1977 she began selling them in her own store, Cocolat, which soon expanded into a chain. The American craze for truffles started with Medrich

A Canadian variation of the American truffle, known as the Harvey truffle, includes the addition of graham cracker crumbs and peanut butter.

The "French truffle" is made with fresh cream and chocolate and then rolled into cocoa or nut powder

The "Belgian truffle" or praline is made with dark or milk chocolate filled with ganache, buttercream or nut pastes

"Chocolate Truffle." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 04 Jan. 2015

Here is a brief video on how chocolatier's hand make chocolate truffles! 

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