Christmas Recipes: Edible Gifts – No 4 of 8 – Chocolate Truffles
Christmas recipe makes: 2 dozen
Calories per truffle: 65
Preparation time: 30 – 60 minutes
Cooking time: 0 minutes
Suitable for freezing
Christmas recipe ingredients:
Truffle Mixture:
- chocolate, bitter, plain or milk 225g (8 oz)
- double cream, 75 ml (3 fl oz)
- brandy, 75 ml (3 fl oz) or rum,orange liqueur, coffee liqueur, coconut liqueur
Rolled Truffles:
- cocoa powder
- chopped nuts
- coconut, desiccated or grated
- chocolate vermicelli or grated chocolate for rolling
Dipped Truffles:
- chocolate, plain, milk or white (350 g (12 oz) or mixture of all three
Christmas recipe instructions:
- Truffle Mixture: Add the cream to grated chocolate and melt in a bowl over water at boiling point, stirring until smooth. Allow to cool and thicken.
- Add your alcohol of choice and whisk until the mixture is strong enough to stay ‘up’ when a strand of mixture is pulled up by the whisk. Then put the mixture into a shallow tin (covered) and cool till firm.
- Rolled Truffles: Place teaspoonful size amounts of truffle mixture onto a tray sprinkled with cocoa powder and roll into ball shapes. Alternatively you can substitute the cocoa with grated chocolate, chopped nuts, coconut, or chocolate vermicelli. Cool in a refrigerator for at least two hours.
- Dipped Truffles: Roll the truffle mixture into 2.5 cm (1 inch) size balls and freeze overnight until rock hard. [If you wish you could push some edible decor into the balls before cooling, such as nuts, ginger or cherries.]
- Prepare some melted chocolate over water at boiling point. If you can, check the temperature is in the range 46-49 degrees centigrade (115-120 F) or for white chocolate, 43 degrees centigrade.
- Taking two or three truffles at a time, use cocktail sticks to dip them into the melted chocolate before placing them on non-stick paper. Transfer to a refrigerator for cooling for at least two hours to harden. Repeat for the remaining truffles.
- Present the truffles in paper cases and store in boxes. Keep in a refrigerator for up to ten days.