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, dessicated or grated
  
• chocolate vermicelli or grated choclate for rolling

Dipped Truffles:

• chocolate, plain, milk or white (350 g (12 oz)
  or mixture of all three

Christmas recipe instructions:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.]

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. Present the truffles in paper cases and store in boxes. Keep in a refrigerator for up to ten days.