Truffles

One of the treats that I really enjoy making are truffles.  I have made several different varieties and all taste good and are even more impressive looking!  I love that it requires no actual baking, which for me means less chances of messing them up!

The recipe for every type of truffle I have made is basically the same, a package of some type of crushed cookies mixed with a block of softened cream cheese.  Form into balls, dip in chocolate and garnish.  Keep cold until every last delicious morsel has been consumed!

The version I have made the most are Oreo Truffles, I always use double stuff cause if you ever need Oreo's for anything, double stuff is almost always going to taste better!  I have found that using a cookie with a filling ie: moisture of some type, means the filling will be more moist.  For the Oreo version I dip in white chocolate or if you live close to a Winco they sell vanilla melty's in bulk.  I then melt a little semi-sweet chocolate for a drizzle.

Another thing I love about truffles is how versatile they can be!  I have made the Oreo kind, but dipped them in mint chocolate chips for a minty version.  One day I will try them with Nutter Butter's and dip those in a dark chocolate, I know they will taste amazing! 

Now for the versions I have pictured.  The white with pink are frosted animal cookie truffles and the chocolate ones are actually a bit of a hybrid.  I'll give you that recipe shortly.  For the frosted animal cookies, I was using up a half of a block of cream cheese and used about 2/3 of a bag of cookies.  I would think that one whole bag would be perfect for one cube of cream cheese, they won't be too dry.  Form into balls, dip in white chocolate and I then added some red food coloring to turn it pink for the drizzle. 

Now, back to my hybrid truffles.  Cake pops seems to be all the rage, if I understand those, they are made by baking up any flavor of a cake mix, crumbling it once it cools and mixing it with any flavor of cake frosting.  After forming those into balls you dip them in chocolate.  They are tasty, but for me, I prefer things mixed with cream cheese.  So the chocolate truffles are actually a combination of a truffle and a cake pop.

I first started with a baked up yellow cake mix.  I had made a cake, but had only needed one square pan so I baked up the rest separately with this recipe in mind.  Once it was baked and cooled, I crumbled it up, added 1/2 block of cream cheese, about 1/4 cup of pumpkin puree and maybe 2 tsp of pumpkin pie spice.

I was totally eyeballing this, if you decide to make it, you will probably have to do the same!  Looking back I wish I would have been a little more generous with the pumpkin and the spice as it seemed a little dry and not strong enough in flavor.  After these little guys were formed I did freeze them before dipping to keep them from falling apart in the chocolate.  When I need to melt chocolate for dipping purposed I always use my double boiler. 

It keeps me from accidentally burning the chocolate (which I have done before!) and gives me a large enough dish to work with when it comes to the dipping process. 

I don't have any fancy tools to coat the balls and get them on a cookie sheet, I just use 2 forks so that ideally any extra chocolate falls through the prongs.  Once I get all of them dipped the chocolate has usually hardened enough to do a drizzle.  I try and do a contrasting drizzle for the best looking effect. Now, just in case you don't already know this, if you need to add color to to some white chocolate, make sure you use food coloring and not just a liquid flavoring that isn't designed for chocolate.  It will cause the chocolate to seize.  I sadly learned this lesson the hard way!

I put them back in the fridge to make sure they are nice and firm before I package them for gifts or where ever their final destination lies!  I don't have a picture of this, but a cute and simple way to package these for gifts is just a clear plastic cup wrapped in clear plastic with a ribbon.  If you are in a serious pinch, a clear plastic cup and then one of those cheap fold and close bags with the sides of the fold slit open and then secured with a twist tie will do the trick.  The contents are so good no one will care that the packaging is less than ideal! 
Enjoy!