The truffle hunter
She’ll happily confess to having eaten vast quantities of chocolate in her life, but it was while making truffles with her son that Sam Woulidge finally found The One
Ilike to end a meal with coffee and chocolate. I will happily forfeit a good night’s sleep and a thigh gap for caffeine and cacao. A crystal bowl filled with bright, shiny-papered Lindt balls or gold foilwrapped Ferrero Rocher is my equivalent to my ma’s elegant post-dinner-party treats served with coffee. Marie was partial to
Cote d’Or bouchées. Olifantjies, we called them, because they were shaped like elephants. They were unlike any chocolate I had ever tasted. A world away from the fake-flavour staples in our corner café. Nothing like the slabs of Bourneville dark chocolate my Oupa Sam used to hide in his clothes cupboard among his polyester paisley cravats.
My ma always saved an olifantjie for me and I savoured every tiny bite – elephant ears first, slowly allowing the chocolate to melt in my mouth. Bit by bit. And when bouchées weren’t on offer, I would cast my eyes longingly at the box of After Eight Mints that awaited the arrival of my parents’ guests. For those, I could momentarily forget my six-year-old self’s distaste for dark chocolate. Who wouldn’t when faced with those thin, sweet, minty squares concealed in their individual dark-brown sleeves? “How fancy,” I thought, nibbling at the corners of one while furtively reaching for the next.
These days, I am generally more than happy to rip open a few bags of Chuckles and pour them into my inherited crystal bowl, or just tear open a few slabs of Lindt in the fading candlelight and drop them on the dining table, paper packaging and all, so that my friends can help themselves.
I really should go to more trouble.
The great London baker Lily Vanilli once showed me and a group of friends how to make chocolate truffles and I felt an enormous sense of satisfaction in creating such deliciousness myself. There I was sprinkling sea salt, scattering rose petals, smudging edible silver glitter on homemade chocolate truffles. I was quite the domestic goddess.
I do love a chocolate truffle. So much so that I named our chocolate labrador Truffle. It’s a brilliant name for a greedy brown dog (although Seb, with whom I have just finished reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, believes Truffle should be renamed Augustus Gloop after the boy who fell into the chocolate river). My son may be onto something. It’s a magical thing when a book has such power; when it feels so real. Between chapters, Seb and I would drink hot chocolate with melted marshmallows and allow our imaginations to take flight.
The grass in Mr Wonka’s factory would surely look and taste like the inside of a Peppermint Crisp, we decided. And then we made truffles – with dark chocolate because we had learned about Oompa Loompas and their craving for cocoa.
And with espresso, because Mamma likes caffeine and Seb has a strange fondness for coffee-flavoured ice cream. And when you’re breaking up 250 g of quality chocolate and using a cup of cream, you shouldn’t be too sanctimonious about things like caffeine and kids anyway.
And then the strangest thing happened. As I took a bite of the rapidly melting, warm-from-my-son’s-hand chocolate truffle before he placed it back in the fridge, I realised that this chocolate truffle surpassed all the other chocolates
I had eaten before. I had found the magic combination. Small chocolate hands.
Huge imagination. Incalculable love.