My go-to dish for pot-lucks is Tee’s Corn Pudding, from the 2003 Southern Living cookbook. I had to take something to my daughter’s Thanksgiving Feast on Tuesday. While I was locating that recipe, I came across a recipe for Hazelnut Truffles. The recipe looked easy enough – heat ¾ cup of whipping cream, add 1 cup of chocolate, 1 tablespoon of butter, 2 tablespoons of hazelnut liqueur, chill at least 2 hours, roll 1” size balls in melted dark chocolate, then in ground toasted hazelnuts. Simple. Anyone can do that. I had visions of taking beautiful handmade truffles to Christmas parties. I would be asked, “Where did you get those delightful confections?” and I would reply “Oh, those little ole things? I just whipped them up before we came.” I looked in the wet bar. No Frangelico. There was a little bit of amaretto, some ersatz Bailey’s Irish Cream (tasted like lighter fluid – most of bottle still there 5 yrs later), a few whiskeys and some Triple Sec. I went with my Final Item Thanksgiving Feast grocery list to HEB. The only hazelnuts I could find were in the mixed in-shell nuts, and I think I would have had to buy 10# of them to get 1 cup of shelled hazelnuts. I decided on Triple Sec for the inside with melted cinnamon chip coating, rolled in coconut. I made the ganache yesterday, thinking that rolling the truffles would be a fun thing my daughter and I could do today. While the ganache tasted sublime, it was the consistency of chocolate sauce. I added more chocolate chips (twice) and it never got quite thick enough to work with. I send my husband to Kroger for confectioner’s sugar and diapers (unrelated items). I added the powdered sugar and added it and added it. I think this must have been the world’s lumpiest powdered sugar, because when I finally got the chocolate to a thick enough consistency that I could roll it into a ball, I found a number of crack rock sized chunks of sugar embedded in my truffles. In the mean time, my melted cinnamon chips were rapidly congealing, so I had to kind of pack the coating on. At least the unloveliness of the truffles is disguised by the coconut (but they have inner beauty!) and they taste alright. Really, nothing with 1-1/2 bags of chocolate chips and ¾ cup of whipping cream is going to taste bad. It’s nearly 12:30. Maybe my pumpkin pies (yes, I had only intended to make 1) will be cool enough to cover and put in the fridge. I had bought pie shells last shopping trip. The recipe I stumbled onto called for 3 cups of pumpkin. I had a gallon and a half of fresh pumpkin in the fridge, because my daughter wanted to cut up a pumpkin to make pie, so 3 cups was a good thing, although it didn’t make much of a dent. The recipe also called a 10” deep dish pie shell. It filled the two 8” shells and a ramekin. At least I remembered to put the Tofurkey in the fridge to thaw this morning. Now that my delusions of culinary grandeur are shattered, I think I will stick with the corn pudding.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!