Some recipes work. Some recipes fail. Some recipes almost work. Some recipes that almost work can be repurposed. This is a story of a repurposed recipe.

White chocolate is not my favorite chocolate, but as a delivery mechanism for sugar and fat, it’s not bad. I occasionally buy it and use it in my cooking. After three recent posts that featured dark or unsweetened chocolate, it seemed like it was time for white chocolate to make its second appearance on this blog.

The same day I found the chocolate macaroon recipe in Fritz Knipschildt’s Chocopologie, I also found a recipe he calls creamsicle truffles, an orange-flavored white-chocolate truffle. I thought to myself, “I’ve made lots of truffles. these should be a snap.” Wrong. They flat out didn’t work the way they’re described in the book.

Why didn’t the recipe work? The only significant change I made was to prepare a half-portion of ingredients. I was making mignardise not full-sized truffles. White chocolate, since 2002, is a regulated ingredient, but maybe mine has less cocoa butter than his. That could maybe explain why the truffles didn’t work. Everything in the recipe proceeded as expected until the point where the chilled ganache was to be rolled into balls for dipping. The paste was firm but very sticky. I tried both gloves and bare hands, but in each case the mixture wanted to stick to my hands rather than form into balls. In frustration, I placed the bowl of white ganache back in my refrigerator, assuming I would try again another day.

A few days later, I tried again to roll the ganache into balls. As cold as it was, it was still too sticky. As I tried and failed, I was forced to eat each failure. This stuff tasted too good to toss. So I began to think of other forms that I could use to serve the ganache. It didn’t have to be a truffle. My first thought was to use it in filled candies, but that seemed like too much work. Then I thought about just dividing it between small glasses and serving it with a small spoon. To be transferred to glasses, all the ganache needed was gentle heating in the microwave. Failed truffles make good mignardise!