Hi, all!

I’m making some truffles, and I was looking at some recipes here and there.  Anyway, in my “plain ‘ol” Betty Crocker cookbook, she uses butter, cream and egg yolk.  Basically, you temper the egg yolk with some of the melted chocolate and then add it to all of the chocolate.  I’d never seen egg yolk, so I googled it, and there are several recipes that use egg yolks, in varying amounts. 

Has anyone made truffles with egg yolks?  If so, do you find them preferable to those made without egg yolks?

I was going to make mine with straight coconut milk—just coconut milk, chocolate and, probably, khaluah—but I’m intrigued by this egg yolk business.

Thanks for any thoughts!!

—ak

Everything is better with egg yolks!   

I’ve seen truffle recipes both ways- with yolks and without (without is usually equivalent to a ganache of some sort).  I would try to find pasteurized eggs for the “with” recipes.

Interested to see what you make

Thanks, Julie!

I would like to say “aaarrrrgh” and have a small rant re pasteurized eggs.  We have been making things forever without them.  Suddenly gets a patent and starts pasteurizing them, and promoting them, and we now find it somehow important.  And the patent holder—and the people paid to promote the eggs—make a nice buck.

Pasteurization only compensates for filthy conditions.  With clean and humane conditions, we don’t need it.  Encouraging the pasteurization of things—i.e., killing bad bacteria after the fact rather than promoting conditions that prevent it—encourages the filthy conditions that make it “necessary” to begin with.  Using gross sludge water to grow almonds and people get sick?  Pasteurize the almonds!  Keeping cows in filth so the milk makes people sick?  Pasteurize the milk!  It seems to me that if we simply enforced cleanliness instead of trying to work around filth, we would be accomplishing more than one thing.

If there were cleaner conditions in the world, more of us would have access to that wonderful non-pasteurized cream you get, Julie!

Many of us responded to a post some time ago where a baker was afraid of the egg yolk buttercreams and rather upset about the yolks in the buttercreams, and we said that we’ve been making them for ages and have had no sicknesses.  We’ve been eating soft boiled eggs, poached eggs, over easy eggs all our lives.  Why find it necessary to make them with pasteurized eggs now? 

Okay, I’m done.

Rant over.

With thanks.

—ak

p.s. I’m going with my fave chocolate and coconut milk truffles and adding some kaluah.

I hear you Anne, I feel fortunate to have farms here in town that sell raw milk and farm fresh eggs.  I’ve been in their barns, their cheesemaking facilities and their chicken coop, and everything is so well-maintained and clean, and they even make visitors obey all clothing and health regulations (we even have to wash our shoes and then cover them to enter).  Just made Rose’s Gougeres with completely gorgeous local cheese, can’t wait for Thanksgiving to gobble them up!