Chocolate Truffles for Hot Weather

It’s always hot here. Which means you can’t leave anything that requires non-hot temperatures on the side for any amount of time. Either two things happen, you end up with food covered in ants or you end up with warm, melted food. So things like jelly, ice cream, truffles, cheese cakes, anything like that, it’s a no-go. It stays in the fridge or it goes on the side and makes a horrible mess in a few minutes. That’s really annoying because I really like chocolate truffles. Even though I’m now finally writing this article in NOVEMBER and publishing it in December, it’s still pretty warm.

But I did eventually manage to make something that at least lasts a few minutes before turning into a pool of sugar and chocolate.

This is the only picture of a bunch of chocolate truffles I made. They kinda need to be kept in the fridge if the temperature is above 25 C because otherwise they get too sticky to handle. This recipe makes about 20-25 truffles, assuming they’re the size of €2 coins.

Recipe:

• About 200g Dark Chocolate or a mixture of Dark and Milk Chocolate, but preferably more dark chocolate than milk chocolate.
• About 250ml Cooking/Whipping Cream
• A splash of milk
• About 200g of Petit Buerre biscuits, or Digestive biscuits or Rich Tea biscuits or Hob Nobs or any sort of plain biscuit, depending on how rich you want the truffles to be. If you want something insanely rich, use chocolate-coated Digestives, Morning Coffee or Chocolate Bourbons.
• Pinch of salt
• Cocoa and butter – in case the mixture is too sticky or too dry.
• Some sort of coating. Normally I use chocolate sprinkles but crushed up digestive biscuits work really nicely as well. You can also dust them in cocoa powder.

Instructions:

Melt the chocolate slowly in a glass bowl over some hot water in a pan. Try to avoid stirring it until it’s completely melted. Then lower the heat as much as you can and very slowly add the milk, salt and cream. When it’s mixed, remove from the stove. Next, crush the biscuits into fine crumbs. If you use bourbons, scoop the middles out first and stir them into the chocolate/milk mixture. Take your crumbs and mix them into the melted chocolate mixture until you’ve got a sort of dough that holds its shape and can be held in your hand. If the mixture is too sticky, add some melted butter or cream. If it’s too wet, add some cocoa powder or more biscuit crumbs. Make small balls (whatever size you want) then roll them in your coating of choice.

Once coated, place on a tray and refrigerate for a while. Normally about an hour will do it but it depends on how impatient you are. Don’t put them in the freezer though unless it’s frost-free.

Before you make your mixture into balls, you can also add extra things. Pistachios are particularly nice, but vanilla or a pinch of cinnamon will also make good truffles. Really you can put whatever you want in the truffles and split your mixture into multiple batches once you’ve added the biscuit crumbs.

You can eat the truffles at your leisure, but they’re best served with plain vanilla ice cream.