Marin Hinkle of ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ Melts Chocolate

“It’s very easy,” the actress Marin Hinkle mentioned, her eyes closed in obvious bliss.

This was a brisk Monday afternoon and Ms. Hinkle, 55, had taken over the kitchen of a pal’s immaculate residence on the Higher West Facet to discover ways to make chocolate truffles. (Her personal kitchen close by wanted repairs.)

Her trainer was one other pal: Ruth Kennison, the founding father of the Chocolate Challenge. Ms. Kennison and Ms. Hinkle met in highschool practically 40 years in the past, and spent a summer season working at a sweet retailer in Boston, consuming bonbons on the job. After school, they each moved to Los Angeles, birthing sons a month aside.

Just a few years in the past, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” the comedy that Ms. Hinkle stars in, shot a few episodes in Paris. Ms. Hinkle traded in her first-class aircraft ticket for 4 coach seats and invited Ms. Kennison to affix her. Their sons got here, too.

“I made them go to each chocolate store in Paris,” Ms. Kennison mentioned.

Ms. Hinkle smiled. “The chocolate has by no means stopped,” she added.

Ms. Kennison poured glasses of pink Champagne whereas Ms. Hinkle, elegant in a blue silk shirt, high-waisted denims and high-heeled clogs, admired the renovated kitchen, a haven of gleaming white. Late afternoon solar filtered in by way of the image window, turning the marble counters gold.

Ms. Kennison started the truffle lesson with a short lecture on the biology of the cacao tree, full with photos and props.

“Are they at all times exhausting like this?” Ms. Hinkle requested, greedy an enormous, red-shaded seed pod.

“Nicely, that’s the ceramic model,” Ms. Kennison mentioned gently, handing her pal an actual pod.

Then they segued into tasting, with Ms. Kennison urging her pal to savor every area’s specific terroir.

Vietnamese chocolate? Spicy.

Chocolate from Madagascar? Fruity.

The morsel from Fiji? So easy.

They moved onto a couple of, high-end bars flavored with unique components: matcha, ardour fruit, bee pollen. This nudged Ms. Hinkle, who had earlier claimed to love all chocolate, towards a confession. “I’m really a milk chocolate particular person,” she mentioned.

Ms. Kennison accepted it. Then she handed Ms. Hinkle a branded brown apron and instructed her to alter out of her shirt. They’d truffles to make — a messy enterprise.

Ms. Hinkle returned moments later in a white T-shirt, clothes so informal that it will ship Rose, the character she performs on “Maisel,” into hysterics. Rose, a professor’s spouse and the mom of the title character, by no means seems sloppily dressed or imperfectly coifed. Her make up? A Platonic excellent.

“They construct the costume on me prefer it’s liquid paint,” Ms. Hinkle mentioned. “And it’s a cliché, however 80 to 90 p.c of the work is correct there.”

Rose tends to flounce by way of each second of her life as if giving a command efficiency. “That’s so not me,” Ms. Hinkle mentioned. However she loves the present and the household feeling among the many solid, who’ve traveled collectively to Paris, Miami and the Catskills. The present simply accomplished its fourth season. Ms. Hinkle has already begun filming its fifth and remaining one, with sophisticated feelings.

“If Amy and Dan imagine that is the appropriate time, I’m so there to respect that,” she mentioned of the present’s creators, Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino. “However I’ll cry each single day. I’ve to savor each second of the season.”

However now, with out tears, there have been truffles to make. Ms. Hinkle eliminated her jewellery and washed her palms. Then, beneath Ms. Kennison’s path, she stirred butter and cream right into a pot of Ghanaian chocolate, making small vigorous motions in order that the fat would emulsify and kind a ganache, the filling for the truffles.

The ganache would wish 24 hours to set. So in a little bit of kitchen wizardry, Ms. Kennison produced two bowls of premade ganache, one darkish, one darkish milk. Utilizing miniature ice cream scoops, they rolled the ganache into little and never so little balls, their palms darkening with melting chocolate.

Ms. Hinkle anxious that her truffles seemed lower than good.

Perfection wasn’t required. “There is no such thing as a proper or fallacious,” Ms. Kennison mentioned reassuringly. “The one factor chocolate doesn’t like is once you’re scared. Chocolate smells your worry.” Fortunately, the kitchen didn’t odor like worry. It smelled like chocolate.

When the balls have been rolled, Ms. Hinkle poured melted chocolate onto a marble slab to mood it, cooling and manipulating it to offer it a shiny end. Ms. Hinkle dug in, with a paint scraper and an offset spatula bought from the native ironmongery shop, till the slab resembled a splatter portray. Then she scraped the chocolate again into the bowl and reheated it with a hair dryer till it was prepared for dipping.

Spooning melted chocolate into her hand (“It feels so good,” Ms. Hinkle mentioned) she rolled every truffle in it, with Ms. Kennison hurrying her on: “Fast, fast, fast, fast, fast!” She then handed the dipped truffles to Ms. Kennison, who rolled them in cocoa powder, sprinkles or crushed pecans. The milk ones and the darkish ones jumbled in because the pile of accomplished truffles grew to about 50 bonbons.

“It appears so fairly,” Ms. Hinkle mentioned.

Ms. Kennison urged her to attempt one. Ms. Hinkle plucked one from the slab and delicately bit. Bliss once more. “OK,” she mentioned. “That’s loopy good.”