Sunday, March 6, 2011

Easy Chocolate Truffles

These are time consuming, but not difficult.  They taste great and make a beautiful presentation, especially around the holidays!

Ingredients:
8 ounces semi- or bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
8 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
Almond bark (vanilla or chocolate, or both)
Your choice of flavoring (see below)

Your choice of coating (see below)

Directions:
Heat chocolates, butter and milk in a pan until chocolates and butter are partially melted. Remove from heat and stir until completely melted. Whisk in desired flavoring until creamy-smooth.

Transfer to a bowl and let stand until firm enough to hold its shape, about 2 hours.


Using a tablespoon (or a melon baller, which works great to keep the size consistent), mold chocolate into balls and place on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper.  If necessary, roll truffles by hand to make round


Melt almond bark in the microwave (directions on back of package).  Dip (using a fork is easiest) each truffle into the almond bark, place on wax paper, then sprinkle with desired coating while still melted.  Let dry for 30 minutes.


Tips
Sometimes you have to dip these twice (for instance, if you're doing the chocolate truffle with a white chocolate coating, sometimes the inner truffle shows through).

Often a small hole will appear in the very bottom of the truffle where the melted almond bark was unable to adhere – easy enough to fix, simple get a butter knife and swipe a bit of the melted chocolate over it, it won't show.


I usually also drizzle a bit of a different color chocolate over the top of them with the tip of a knife to make a nice swirl design. 
These can be refrigerated in an airtight container up to 5 days or frozen up to 1 month.

Flavoring ideas:

Orange: 6 tbs. orange-flavored liqueur, such as Grand Marnier, and 1/2 tsp. finely grated orange zest

Coffee: 6 tbs. coffee-flavored liqueur, such as Kahlua and 1 tsp. instant coffee

Raspberry: 6 tbs. raspberry flavoring or liqueur, such as Chambord

Coating ideas: 
Coconut, cocoa powder, crumbled heath bars (can also be mixed in), sprinkles of any type, crushed candy canes, chopped nuts, mint chocolate.... the list goes on and on!

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