Nutella Truffles

That's right, I put truffles and nutella in the same sentence. Put a towel over your keyboard, you'll need it for the drool.

I made two different types of truffles. The first was honey, nutella, chocolate chips, and butter. The second was cake, nutella, and peanut butter. The latter are by far my favorites because classic truffles are a little too rich for me. The cake version is a whimsical mix of flavors that has a much lighter texture than your classic truffle while still being rich and delicious. Note: Truffles are absurdly time consuming. Not for a person who just has a half an hour they want to burn making something yummy.

First I made the cake version. My sister just graduated and we still have her sheet cake and her roommate's sheet cake. So with all of this extra marble cake around, I cheated. The recipe calls for baking your own cake, but why would I add more cake to the house? So I simply sliced off the frosting and stole some cake.

 

First you cut your cake into chunks and put it in a LARGE bowl. Then you mash it up into a nice crumble with a fork. Or if feeling particularly violent, you could probably use a hammer.

There is no need to be very picky at this point, as you can see it doesn't have to be cake dust, you just need it to be smaller. Next, you add nutella and peanut butter. You want it to be a consistency that stirs well and will shape and stay formed into spheres. For a 6x9 sheet cake, it took about a half a cup of each. Again, measurements aren't vital, you need to experiment.

This is the step that made it look like a chocolate monster ran through my kitchen in the middle of an m&m and sprinkle hurricane. Rolling the spheres is messy, awesome, and hands on. If you don't like getting your hands and kitchen messy, may I suggest Godiva? Again, I cheated. We have a lovely spoon that is meant for making spheres out of pears and melons, but it is also awesome for truffles. It is essentially an inch diameter half truffle sized spoon.

Part of the problem with truffles is you have to wait at least half an hour between each step. It is VITAL that you put them in the freezer at this point, or you will have chocolate and cake crumbles everywhere.So while these froze, I moved on to the serious truffle business.

Why yes, you did just go to chocolate heaven.

Honey Nutella Truffles
300 grams Nutella
100 grams chocolate chips
4 tbsp honey
1 tbsp ghee (or, for cheaters like me, melted butter.)

I realize the grams make things difficult. Turns out my mom had a food scale which I doubt she'll notice disappearing and ending up in my apartment for food emergencies such as this.

There is a blatant lack of pictures of these as spheres because this was absurdly messy. Why? Because the chocolate starts out at this consistency:

Did I say chocolate heaven before? Well, this is the deluxe heaven's swimming pool. At this point you need to put the bowl in the freezer unless you plan on making chocolate puddles. It takes half an hour to an hour. Then as you scoop them into balls please be aware that they will melt on your hands. The original recipe writer said to try putting butter on your hands but that sounded more difficult to wash off than chocolate.

Now for my favorite part, decorating! You can use any candy or anything you can turn into crumbs. I used m&ms, colored sugars, chocolate sprinkles, and crushed oreos. I have fancy new 99 cent squeeze bottles that I used to drizzle a mixture of powdered sugar and milk over a few of them.

Melting the chocolate and keeping it at dipping consistency was damn near impossible. Luckily about a third of the way through (aka 2 hours later) my Mom reminded me we own a fondue pot. I suggest bittersweet chocolate and if you are having difficulties, feel free to add a little milk.

All told, these took about 3 and a half hours to make and clean up after. I suggest setting them on cookie sheets covered in foil or wax paper.

These are christmas gifts for my family, so I made adorable little Not a Bakery brand boxes.

Thanks to Sunita Bhuyan and Crepes of Wrath for the wonderful recipes. They can be found here and here.

Tips for Trying:
-Keep truffles refrigerated before, during, and after making.
-Don't be afraid to experiment
-Spend the extra dollar on getting a truffle dipping tool. If you don't have one, a (well washed) bubble blowing stick could in theory work just about the same.