This post is about some snacks that I assisted my lovely friend Brooke (who is an amazing artist, cook, decorator, hostess, themed party planner and all-around person in general, and whose Artsy-Tartsy blog has some examples of her amazing work) in making and bringing to the Graphic Novel Class we took in May, which was taught by the Pope brothers, Rowan and Bly, who are not only mind-blowingly talented artists but also incredibly nice people and great teachers.
Because the class was all about making comics, and the Avengers had come out recently and was quite popular, the two of us decided to use that as a theme for our goodies. We shopped and cooked (well, as much cooking as truffles and tarts require) for about 6-7 hours and ended up being two hours late to class that day, but it was a fun experience, in my case a very informative one, and in my eyes it was worth every minute of work.
Below is a photograph of everything we made, as well as details about each item.
Let's start our more in-depth descriptions of the food by looking at the leftmost platter.
Item one, the Superman Tart!
It consists of a delicious flaky tart pastry spread with a layer of sweet creamy stuff (don't remember exactly what it was, but it was tasty!), which is then covered with fresh pineapple and strawberries, cut and arranged to look like the Superman logo. It was very delicate, so much so I had to hold it in place on its tray with my hands as we drove our goodies to class, since it risked breaking apart if the motion of the car caused to slide around too much. It was very popular and was the first thing to be eaten up entirely once we brought it to class.
Beside it are the Thor truffles.
I like this truffle. ANOTHER!!
These truffles were cherry-flavored (we picked cherries to match he red of Thor's cloak) and used milk chocolate (because of Thor's amiable personality). Ideally we would've tried to shape them into little hammers, but we didn't have enough time to conceivably pull it off.
Next, we move on to the rest of the truffles on Tray Two.
The first one we'll start with are the Captain America truffles.
They were the most unique truffles of the lot, since they were made using nothing but but white chocolate, along with a cheesecake-like concoction, and also contained a fresh raspberry in the center of each truffle.
We chose these ingredient to symbolize his kind and friendly personality and his pure and passionate adherence to his moral code and superheroism. As you can see, they're also star-spangled on the outside, and when you bit into them you could see all the patriotic colors of the truffle in its layers: the red raspberry center, white cheesecake filling and blue chocolate shell. These were definitely one of the most popular truffles of the day.
Next, we've got some simple SMASHing truffles:
The Hulk truffles are peppermint (because it's a really strong flavor!) and milk chocolate, to represent the calm personality of Bruce Banner. I would think it obvious why they're green. We melted down these chocolate mint candies instead of chocolate chips to make the truffles, which gave them an interesting texture.
Here are the coffee-flavored Black Widow truffles made with semi-sweet chocolate. They're covered with white chocolate because we planned on drawing spiders onto them in black, but we ended up not having enough time to do that. Probably should've made them black or orange-red instead, to be more easily visually linked to the character. Oh well, we'll just have to do that next time.
We ended up not making Clint truffles because of time constraints, and because we couldn't think of a good flavor to represent him. If anyone has any suggestions on flavors related to him, they'd be much appreciated!
Lastly, we have the truffles for Iron Man/Tony Stark! They've got red chocolate shells painted with edible gold something to resemble his helmet/suit. They had a unique inside consisting of more of a cookie dough-like substance, rather than pure chocolate and cream cheese like most of the others, and the insides were flavored with Malibu Coconut Rum, because he likes drinking and I think he's mentioned having a vacation home in Malibu in the movies, but I could be wrong
These were the least rich truffles of the bunch, and were actually a bit better for it. The other truffles were incredibly rich and filling and probably could've stood to have been made much smaller, so they wouldn't be so overwhelming. Anyways, these truffles were also very popular (so much so that out of the leftover Iron Man truffles I brought home with me to share with my family, the majority of them mysteriously disappeared all at once, most likely into one mouth), though not quiiite as much a the Cap truffles.
We ended up making 95 truffles total, and we had lots of leftovers after class. Next time, we probably wouldn't need to make so many, since nobody ate more than a few truffles before having reached their maximum intake of rich food.
Overall, these took a lot of materials, effort and time to make, but it was a fun experience and the results were incredibly tasty, and nerdy to boot. If I ever try to create Avengers truffles again in the future, I'd definitely want to complete the assembled team and make Clint truffles, dark chocolate Nick Fury truffles and maybe key-lime Loki truffles besides.
