I am a bit of a hypocrite. I decry people who produce foods items under names that, to me, don’t look anything like what I think the item should look like. Case in point: truffles. There are many commercial candy makers that sell filled-chocolate candies as truffles because, I assume, they think these will sell better than if they called them something else.

To me, a truffle is a tasty, highly aromatic fungus. A chocolate truffle is a ball of ganache of an irregular shape, dusted with cocoa powder, that resembles the true truffle. A decorated chocolate shell filled with a myriad of flavored fillings is not, in my opinion, a chocolate truffle.

By presenting the following recipe as a truffle, I officially become a hypocrite. Although I could make a case that the finished candies resemble white truffles in appearance, the filling is not a ganache.

My recipe is adapted from one prepared with chestnut cream. I found the recipe on a website called MenuGourmet. The original recipe was called les truffes aux marrons, or chestnut truffles. Who am I to quarrel with a title?

Using the quantities prescribed below, the original recipe claimed to produce 5 truffles. I easily made 15. Since the original recipe did not specify a size, I would assume that if only 5 were made, they’d each be 4-1⁄3 cm (1-3⁄4-in) in diameter. Still a proper size for a truffle, albeit a more expensive one, but a little large for a mignardise.