Blackberry Goat Cheese Chocolate Bombs

Blackberry Goat Cheese Chocolate Bombs

December 17, 2020 Posted by Robin Renken 12 Days of Wine Holiday Edition, Australia, Nebbiolo, Orange, Recipes and Wine Pairings No Comments

Blackberry Goat Cheese Chocolate Bombs

Whew! That’s a mouthful, isn’t it?

I was looking to pair with an Australian Nebbiolo and Goat Cheese and Blackberry…well that with chocolate would just do the trick.

I found this recipe on Pinterest and tracked it down to Crumb Top Baking

https://www.crumbtopbaking.com/frozen-blackberry-goat-cheese-chocolate-bombs/

Of course, I needed to adjust from metric and then, we just bought these great silicon molds, so rather than dip these, I wanted to temper chocolate and make domes! (What was I thinking!) I will admit to learning along the way with these and I will share some of my mistakes and what I would do differently as we go along. Keep in mind, if you don’t have silicone molds, you can follow Leanne’s instructions in the link above to dip these!

Time: 1 Hour 45 Minutes

Yield: 8 Servings

mini blackberry goat cheese chocolate bombs — In the mini chocolate bombs, you can see the filling

What to Pair?

2018 Rowlee Single Vineyard Nebbiolo

We visited Rowlee Vineyard in the Orange Wine Region of NSW Australia in October of 2019. One of the standouts and a wine that we left with, was their 2018 Nebbiolo. They have 2 clones of Nebbiolo and they only make it in the best years. James says they know the Nebbiolo is right when it tastes like a piece of licorice when they taste it on the vine.

The 2018 vintage has notes of black fruit, red fruit, cocoa powder, sweet tobacco, licorice, and florals. It has great acid and flavors of bramble fruit and red cherry with a long finish.

14% abv 100% Nebbiolo $60 AU SRP

Tempered Chocolate

Ingredients

1 ½ cup of chocolate chips (be sure this is not composite chocolate there should be no fats or oils other than cocoa butter)

There are several methods for tempering chocolate, which if you are a cooking show junkie like me, you are probably aware of at least 2 of them. Tempering chocolate is a method of heating and cooling the chocolate to get the cocoa butter crystals to align themselves so that when the chocolate sets it is smooth, shiny, and crisp.

There are 3 methods I found:

Seed Method
Tablier Method
Microwave Method

The Tablier method is that one you see at the Chocolatiers, where they have a large piece of marble and a putty knife and they spread and scrape the chocolate.

The Microwave Method felt shady to Michael and we didn’t (think) we have a silicone bowl.

So the Seeding Method was what we were going with.

Directions

Melt 1 cup in a double boiler, (I use a glass bowl over a pot of water) stirring constantly until it reaches 115 degrees (55 C). Be careful that steam and water don’t get into your chocolate.
Remove the bowl of melted chocolate from the double boiler (sit it on a towel on the counter) and add the remaining chips. Stir the chocolate to melt and continue stirring until the temperature drops to 83 degrees (you can, and probably should, move the chocolate to a second bowl after you stir in and melt the chocolate. This will speed up the cooling process. I did not and it took FOREVER!)
Now put this back on the double boiler and get it back up to 88 to 90 degrees which is where you want it to be when you are working with it.

*Plan B – use the microwave method! (see below)*

Now, you can make your domes
Using a spoon the appropriate size for your dome, drop a dollop of chocolate in the mold and then paint it up the sides using the back of a spoon. Here is a video that I followed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgSeH5nNB_w
These go in the freezer to set up for 15 minutes.
While they are setting, make the filling.

Plan B – Microwave method of Tempering Chocolate

Two days later I realized I did have a silicon dish! So here’s how you would do this in the microwave!

Place the chocolate in your silicon dish, microwave for 30 seconds on high, then stir (use your instant read thermometer) don’t let the temperature go over 90 degrees.
If the chocolate is not completely melted return for 30 seconds, then 15 seconds, then 10 seconds, stirring each time and checking the temperature. When the chocolate is melted, you are good to go.

This is sooo much easier than the seeding method. I will never go back! (I used this for another recipe that will be coming up!)

Here is a great resource for tempering chocolate. https://sugargeekshow.com/recipe/tempering-chocolate/

Filling

Ingredients

10 ounce log of goat cheese

3 tbs honey

2 tsp vanilla

½ cup unsweetened coconut

1 cup of chopped fresh blackberries

Directions

In your stand mixer, mix the goat cheese, honey and vanilla
Beat on high for 2 minutes
Add the coconut and mix another 20 seconds
Take the bowl out of the stand mixer and fold in the blackberries by hand

Assembling

Pull the set domes out of the freezer and fill (but not completely) with the filling.
You will need a bit more chocolate to finish these, coating the filling and forming a bottom.
Put these back in the freezer 15 minutes to set.

Watch our quick video for the highlights.

Blackberry Goat Cheese Chocolate Bombs with a Rowlee 2018 Nebbiolo

To tie in the black fruit and cocoa notes in the wine, we made these fancy-schmancy blackberry goat cheese chocolate bombs. While we could have just hand-dipped them, we just bought silicone dome molds and I was dying to use them. So, I learned to temper chocolate (only afterward finding an easier way) and created these delights. We made them in 2 sizes and I kinda prefer the smaller ones that you can pop in your mouth in one bite, even though the larger size looks prettier.