I am making truffles to sell to friends/family to raise a little money to make a donation in my sons name for his birthday. I was going to do a ganache filling and dip in coating chocolate, but I have some questions.

1- do they need to stay refrigerated?
2-how long do they stay good for?
3- Does anyone have any recipes for a ganache or chocolate filling that would last longer/ not need refrigeration, etc...

Please help! Thanks in advance.

Corin

1) No, they'll be fine unrefrigerated. The scalding of the milk will help preserve them. If you're using real chocolate, it's best not to have them refridged anyway.

2) At the chocolate shop I worked in, we said 6 weeks, but who keeps chocolate truffles for 6 weeks????

3) Use your basic ganache filling recipe but substitute some of the milk for another liquid. We used fruit purees and liqueurs, but the fruit ones don't last as long as the others. Another thing we did was scald the milk with some lemon zest in it, then refrigerate the milk overnight to let the lemon flavor seep into it. Then the next day, rescald the milk and strain the zest out of it.

Deanna

I have a great little book that you might find helpful: it's Dee Dee Wilson's "Truffles" and it's uber cheap (about $10 Cad, about the same in US, I believe). She has a great selection of recipes. Some of them have to be refrigerated though, and that's why I thought that this book would be a good one for you to grab if you can.

Good luck with the party and donations. I wish you all the best.

Here are some tips for shelf life. These are from http://forums.egullet.org

If just cream and chocolate - about 2 weeks, replace some of the cream with butter you decrease the available water, so they live longer.
invert sugar can help and don't underestimate the preserving powers of alcohol.
There are several threads in the egullett forum , on chocolate shelf life and pricing.

You can do a little research ,I ll see if I can find some.

Here's one
http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=96879&hl=

More
http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=94070&hl=

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=68017&hl=

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=88240&hl=

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=73382&hl=

Thanks for all the great info! I haven't really worked with chocolates since I got out of school 4 years ago, who needs a refresher course when I have CC.

thanks for the links