I all ready knew how this recipe was going to turn out because my husband and I made these truffles together the first year we got married. We’ve made them again every year. They are easy, inexpensive and delicious. A win from Gifts from the Country Kitchen!
Ingredients:
3 packages (12 oz each) semisweet chocolate chips, 2 1/4 cups condensed milk, 1/2 tsp each orange, peppermint and almond extract, 1 1/2 lb white candy coating, 3/4 lb dark candy coating melted, 1/2 cup ground almonds
The Process:
The trickiest part about making truffles is melting the chocolate. When the recipe tells you to microwave in short busts, it means it! Heating for longer can lead to burnt chocolate. This occurred when a certain person who shall remain nameless, but is married to me, thought that one full minute was better than short bursts of 15 seconds. Heating slowly, and stirring, allows the chocolate to melt properly. Since this is semi-sweet chocolate you don’t have to be as worried as you would be while working with milk chocolate, but it’s still difficult. Double boilers are also great for melting chocolate but are more of a hassle so I save them for milk chocolate.
Once we had a working batch of melted chocolate we mixed in the condensed milk and then chose the extracts we wanted. We made a batch of mint, and a batch of almond. This then goes into the fridge to chill. Unfortunately it still comes out a bit gooey and molding it into balls can be a little messy. Return the formed balls to the fridge so they firm up more and can be easily handled. Then you dip them into the melted candy melts and apply decorative toppings (crushed almond for the almond extract for example). While the recipe calls for a half hour in the fridge, they are still a sticky at that point and thus dipping was a little difficult. We also had some trouble getting the ball immersed so the bottoms of many of our truffles were not dipped.
After a final chilling step these were ready to eat.
The Results
Everyone that we served these truffles to said they tasted great. In fact we gave them to others as part of mishloach manot one year and gotphone calls about how unique and delicious the homemade truffles were. However my results are never as perfect as those pictured. They balls are a little less round or imperfectly dipped. I also suggest longer chilling times – wait until the balls are not sticky to handle them.
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