While I'm waiting for the chocolate temperer to heat up,
I'll describe yesterday's adventure.

My goal was to make a fruit-flavored ganache using dried
fruit. I used my poppyseed grinder to make pastes out of
Trader Joe's dried wild bluberries and dark sweet cherries.
Both made very stiff, sticky pastes after running them
through the grinder.

In a double boiler, I heated TJ's organic heavy whipping
cream. To 8 oz. cream, I stirred in about 8 oz. fruit
paste. "Stir" probably implies an easier process than it
was. It took a lot of stirring and scraping to incorporate
the paste into the cream. I did the blueberries first,
and began to wonder whether this would work at all, when
suddenly it all seemed to dissolve into the cream. It
seemed like the paste had to get hot before it would mix
with the cream. The cherries made a coarser and stiffer
mixture.

In each case, I combined the hot mixture with about a
pound of chopped white chocolate, let stand for 5 minutes,
then stirred to incorporate. Both required a little
time over the boiler to get all the chocolate to melt,
and lots of stirring. Tt seemed like the cherry ganache
might be breaking while I was stirring it, but it looked
okay the next day after it cooled.

Then, I poured the ganache into pans, covered with foil,
and put to cool overnight in the refrigerator. It was
still pretty soft and sticky this morning, but I was able
to scoop them into balls for truffle centers. The cherry
ganache was easier to handle, compared to the blueberries,
but the flavor of the blueberries was better.

Both ganaches are rather dark. You might not think they
were made out of white chocolate, especially the cherry,
to look at them. Both have good flavor, but I like the
blueberry better. I'm thinking maybe half the amount
the fruit might be better, to lighten the color and
texture.