Chocolate and cheese

Two more additions to the food we’ve made in the last few days: Chocolate Truffles and Gougere (cheesy profiteroles). There were two reasons for this, we had a lot of old bits of gouda cheese left that needed finishing and two old chocolate letters from Sinterklaas that needed using. Sinterklaas is a Dutch celebration we have on the 5th December where we celebrate the day of St Nicholas (Santa before he went to the USA and Coca Cola). There are many traditions with these celebrations but one of them is that you get a chocolate letter of the first character of your name (E for Eva…I was always very jealous of people with a name starting with a W as they got more chocolate!!). Both are very easy to make and very tasty although the Gougere were a bit disappointing. I think this was because the cheese was grated instead of cubed and it makes the taste less pronounced. The truffles were delish although rolling them was a bit tricky and very, very sticky. In the end, we made the balls using spoons as it was far easier and our shapes had more “character” this way.


Gougere
250 ml milk
100 g plain flour
50 g butter
4 eggs
75 g cheese (cubed)
pepper and salt
---------------
Bring milk to a boil with butter, pepper and salt. Take off the heat and add the flour at once. Stir well until it forms a big ball then add the eggs and cheese. Put dollops onto a greased plate but space them well as they rise quite a bit. Add some more cheese on top, glaze with milk and bake for 45 min at 180C till brown and risen.


Chocolate truffles
250 g dark chocolate (70% cocoa or more)
50 ml crème
75g butter
2 tbsp sugar
2 egg yolks
2 tbsp Cointreau
50g cocoa
----------
Melt the chocolate in a bowl placed on a pan of boiling water with 1 tbsp of water. Add crème, butter and sugar gradually, then remove the bowl from the pan. Once the mixture has cooled at bit, add the egg yolks and Cointreau and cool for at least two hours. Put the cocoa powder in a bowl, form balls of the cooled mixture, roll these in the cocoa and cool for at least another hour before serving (keep 2-3 days).