~~Truffles~~Homemade~~

Yesterday had us experimenting with making truffles, and it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. My mom loves them, and since we prefer a homemade Christmas this is something that would be fun, and she will enjoy on top of it being something consumable and therefore not taking up room and collecting dust through the year.

Another thing she is receiving is one of my nice big mixing bowls and a collection of my favorite bread recipes. I picked ones that were easy and quick, elaborate ones would be hard for her with working. I also made a picture tutorial of making Kaiser rolls and braided Challah with the recipes. Why add the recipes if I wasn't showing how to make such lovely breads? Also I am thinking of having the recipes lamenated so that they are sturdy and last through kitchen work, we added pictures and clip art to the pages. I think she will love it since she has had fun using my bread recipe.

Now truffles are so easy, but we had to make a batch to see first if they were and if not find a fall back to make for her. This batch went to seminary with the kids to share with their teacher and fellow student as well as the rest of the teachers household, which includes a very pregnant daughter-in-law. :0)

                                    
                    

Truffles
1 pound chocolate
1 cup heavy whipping cream

measure out the chocolate in a bowl then set aside. Heat the cream in a sauce pan to just before boiling and remove. Add this hot cream to the choc (we used choc chips) let sit for about 5 minutes and then whip till smooth, no lumps, nice and smooth.

This is called the ganache and is very soft at this point. You will then put it in the fridge from 1 to 2 hours.  The recipe called for 1 but we had to let it sit for 2 to get it hard enough so it scooped out in a lump instead of goo.

After the ganache sits and stiffens up you then line something, we used a baking sheet, with wax paper and spoon out spoon fulls of ganache. As you can see we lined them on our pan and then we placed the pan in the freezer. The mix is still to soft to roll into balls, its sticky, but freezing them for 10 to 30 minutes hardens them.

 

Once they are hard you start rolling them into balls. At this point they are like soft play dough.

After you roll them you can coat them with cocoa, coconut, crushed nuts, or even melted chocolate. The melted chocolate didn't turn out like I wanted so we might skip that kind of topping.

The cocoa ones were very easy and worked very well. Now these are very rich as all truffles are, my mom usually buys a little box of 4 and eats them slowly over a few days.  I have a little tin that we will line with mini cupcake papers and place one truffle in each paper. There will be more than 4 but she can save them for a long time in the fridge or freezer.

The ganache mix can also be used as a icing on chocolate cake which might be fun for a pot luck at church sometime. Certainly not here at the house since we are cutting out this kind of thing, but eating it isn't the fun in it, making it is a lot of fun at least to me and then seeing how others enjoy a creation that is homemade. So many people think that things taste yummy must come from a box and making from scratch is a forgotten art.

I hope you have a wonderfully blessed day,

Love,

Erika