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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