Truffle shuffle

I hope that you open a bottle of champagne more often than once a year, on New Year's Eve, or perhaps every few years, when christening a new ship or celebrating an engagement. I hope that when you do enjoy champagne, you have a real glass-full with friends, not just a silly little flute of it. (Not that I own any silly flutes.) And I hope that if you do have leftovers from your celebration, you fold the sparkling wine with cream and chocolate and make truffles.

Now, I enjoy buying truffles, especially while on trips with my girlfriends to the lovely Cocoa Dolce in Wichita, which has a particularly heartbreaking truffle with sunflower seed ganache. But sometimes, it's nice to make these things at home. So they're around. For times like midnight and snacking.

I enjoyed truffles and some leftover champagne last night while my husband and I watched Charlie Wilson's War. (Favorite quote: "And that's why you're my press secretary, Boo Boo!") Sometimes, you must devise reasons to celebrate. After all, it's January, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday is the next holiday in line, and I don't know anyone who drinks champagne on that day. Nobody should wait until Valentine's Day for good chocolates.

"Billy broke my heart at Walgreens/

and I cried all the way to Sears"-sized truffles

Chocolate champagne truffles in sparkling sugar
from Martha Stewart Weddings

• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 8 oz semi-sweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (I used Scharffen Berger 70%)
  
• 1/4 cup plus 1 Tb. champagne
• 1 Tb. cognac (optional)
  
• coarse sanding sugar for rolling, placed in a small bowl
  

Bring the cream to a boil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Immediately after the cream begins to really boil, pour the cream over the chocolate in a medium bowl; stir until smooth. Stir in the champagne and cognac. I skipped the cognac, as I'm not a huge brandy drinker and I didn't want to buy a whole bottle for 1 Tb. in a recipe. Instead, I added an extra tablespoon of champagne to the chocolate and a cup of champagne to my wine glass.

Refrigerate, covered, until chocolate mixture is firm enough to roll into balls, at least one hour.

Using a small melon baller or ice-cream scoop, form chocolate mixture into 1-inch balls. I do not have a small melon baller at home, since my melon-balling needs are so marginal, so I used a spoon and smooshed the truffles into spheres using my hands. I had to rinse the layer of melted chocolate that coated my hands after every seven or eight truffles to keep the slipperiness of this project in check. Taking this rinsing break also gave me an excuse to lick my hands.

Roll each ball in coarse sanding sugar, and transfer to rimmed baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate truffles at least 30 minutes or up to 3 days before serving. This recipe makes between two and three dozen truffles, depending on your need for chocolate. My truffles ended up in the two-bite size range. They melted into a silken ribbon of velvet the instant they hit my tongue, and I ate four immediately.