A talent for truffles
Durangoan crafts works of edible art

SideStory: Let them eat cake: A twist on the traditional truffle

Local chocolatier Heidi Timm displays a handful of her homemade truffles, from left: Frangelica Toffee, Bailey’s Caramel and Coconut Mango Chili. A body worker by trade, Timm began making the truffles for her clients and friends, learning the trade while working at a cafe in Eugene, Ore./Photo by Stephen Eginoire.

by Kinsee Morlan

nside her modest yurt tucked away in a quiet Durango valley, Heidi Timm dons a Christmas-colored paisley apron and goes about her work. Her muscular shoulders – leftover from years of gymnastics and modern dance and kept up through yoga and work as a massage therapist – flex and relax as she rhythmically shakes her hand back and forth over a bowl of melted Belgian chocolate. She then gracefully carries balls of chocolate across a sheet of wax paper and plops them into place, separating her hand from the strings of chocolate that form by winding her fingers around on top of each ball. The chocolate stretches thin, makes a decorative twist and eventually breaks.

“I just do this when I feel like it,” Timm says as she finishes the last line of her homemade chocolate truffles on the cooking sheet in front of her. “I find it so much fun. I get kind of curious, I’m still experimenting a lot, and I think, ‘What else would go with chocolate?’”

As Timm talks about “Heidi’s Homegrown Truffles,” her passion-turned-pretty-serious-hobby, she does a good job of keeping her yurt relatively chocolate-free. Aside from a few chocolate stains on her beige kitchen rug and the Jackson Pollock-like pattern of chocolate drizzles on the wax paper, her tiny kitchen is spotless.

Her photo-collaged, avocado-colored refrigerator, though, is crammed with Tupperware filled with frozen ganache balls – in flavors ranging from dairy-free coconut mango chile to her personal favorites, cabernet sauvignon, raspberry and pomegranate. There are plenty of Belgian chocolate bars in the fridge, too.

Timm learned the edible art of truffle-making at a small café in Eugene, Ore., back in the 1980s. She worked nights stocking the truffle shelves and would use up to 30 pounds of chocolate, a double boiler and an ice pick to make huge batches of the gourmet treats. It

“The cocoa in the chocolate will keep you wired all night long,” says Timm with a laugh. She now tries to keep her truffle-making time to afternoons or early evenings.

Timm only worked at the café for about a year, and truffles never crossed her mind again until recently. After seven years as a massage therapist at Trimble Hot Springs, Timm left her job last December and started focusing on Ortho-Bionomy, a type of homeopathic bodywork. She began making truffles again around the same time, bypassing the somewhat complicated double-boil

Timm’s hand-crafted truffles, like this one topped with hazelnut and coconut, won her first prize in the Amateur Category at this year’s Chocolate Fantasia fund-raiser. However, for the time being, Timm makes the truffles only “when she feels like it.”/Photo by Stephen Eginoire.

Timm only worked at the café for about a year, and truffles never crossed her mind again until recently. After seven years as a massage therapist at Trimble Hot Springs, Timm left her job last December and started focusing on Ortho-Bionomy, a type of homeopathic bodywork. She began making truffles again around the same time, bypassing the somewhat complicated double-boil

“Everyone likes chocolate,” Timm says. “I’ve found that the people I give my truffles to don’t tend to forget me.”

Her truffle-making is partially a handy little marketing tool that might be responsible for keeping her clients coming back, but mostly, it’s simply something Timm likes to do. She likes making people happy via chocolate and she’s into intuiting what flavor a particular person might enjoy. It doesn’t hurt that Timm’s pretty darn good at it, too, winning first prize in the amateur category at this year’s Chocolate Fant- 4

So what’s her truffle secret?

“A teacher of mine pointed me to this truffle website,” she says. “And on it, it said, ‘The distance between the bitterness of the chocolate and the sweetness of the flavor should be short.’ Isn’t that an interesting way to talk about it? And it’s true – chocolate, the cocoa bean, has a certain bitterness to it, and that’s one of the reasons you always add sugar. But, if you add too much sweetness, especially without milk, it makes the chocolate actually taste more bitter. It’s like a yin and yang thing. So, if you keep the distance short, it mellows the bitterness. That’s why I think that cabernet does so well.”

Timm’s truffles are subtle and never too shockingly sweet, and alcohol is a recurring flavor. Her most favored truffles are flavored by Frangelico, a hazelnut liqueur, or red wine. She’s toying with the idea of trying a beer truffle, and lately, she’s taken to wandering the isles of liquor stores in search of new inspirations.

“It turns out a lot of locals are truffle-nados,” Timm says with a smile. “What’s the word? Aficionados? I was trying to combine the word truffle with aficionados but I don’t know if that actually worked.” •

Heidi’s Homegrown Truffles aren’t sold in stores. If you want to sample a few, -email Heidi Timm at timmh53@yahoo.com.