I visited Paul A Young‘s beautiful chocolate shop last week and was so inspired by all the little pieces of perfection and flavours. I decided that I’d have a go at chocolate making. Diwali was a perfect excuse but to be honest, these delicious little delights could be made at any time of year as a perfect gift!
The barfi recipe is adapted from the one used by one of my favourite Indian food shops – Bobby’s in Leicester.
Pick me up and eat me sized Barfi Truffles
You’ll need
- 400ml cold water
- 120g ghee
- 500g full fat milk powder
- 160g sugar
- one tsp ground cardamom – I prefer to take fresh seeds and grind them in a pestle and mortar.
- 70 g chopped pistachios
- Vegetable oil for greasing
- A bar of good quality dark chocolate – 80% cocoa solids
To make them
- Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper and set aside.
- Put the milk powder into a large bowl and set aside.
- Heat the 200ml of water and 100g of ghee until the liquid is boiling.
- Pour onto the milk powder and mix it together really well. It will be a bit lumpy but it doesn’t matter.
- Put another 200ml of water into a pan and then add to this the remaining 20g of ghee, sugar and ground cardamom.
- Heat this til the sugar has dissolved and then add the milk powder mixture .
- Mix and stir this well over a high heat for a couple of minutes to cook out. Do not let it catch at the bottom of the pan otherwise it will brown.
- Pour this onto a plate and while it’s still soft but comfortable to touch, break off a little piece, roll it into a ball and set to cool completely on the prepared baking tray.
- Do this until all the mixture is used up.
- Once the little spheres are cool you can coat them in chocolate.
- Melt the chocolate and then dip into it one of the spheres. I use a cocktail stick.
- Place the sphere back onto the baking tray and sprinkle over some chopped pistachios. You could also use chocolate sprinkles or dessicated coconut or walnuts – whatever you fancy I suppose!
- Repeat for the rest of the spheres and voilà – Diwali Truffles!
You could also serve the barfi as a petit four after dinner. Once you’ve made it, simply pour it into mini muffin moulds and then drizzle with chocolate as below:
