Chocolate Truffles — The Weekender
Nearly every year, I make at least half a dozen varieties of holiday cookies to share with friends, neighbors and relatives. I have a few standbys (sugar, gingerbread, chocolate crinkles) and a few wild card slots (this year, they are thumbprints, almond flour shortbread, and oat cookies with cranberries and pistachios).
In addition to those cookies, I also try to include one extra sweet in my holiday treat assortment. In the past I've made oven-roasted caramel corn, easy fudge with sweetened condensed milk and crunchy pepita toffee.
This year as I was scanning recipe websites, looking for that extra something sweet to put in my treat packages, I spotted Ina Garten's recipe for Chocolate Truffles.
You make them by melting white chocolate together with some heavy cream, vanilla extract and Baileys. Once it's melted and uniform, you refrigerate the mixture until it is firm. Next you scoop and roll the chocolate. It gets a little rest in the fridge to set up the truffles, then you drizzle them with warmed dark chocolate.
I found that the hardest thing about these tasty treats was clearing enough space in my refrigerator for the baking sheet. Everything else was blessedly simple. As you contemplate holiday parties and cookie exchanges, consider these truffles. They are perfect as your next Weekender.
- If you have a small cookie dough scoop, use it for this recipe. It will make far quicker work of your truffles than a pair of teaspoons.
- Ina calls for Baileys in her recipe, but if Irish cream isn't your thing, any other liqueur will work. Peppermint schnapps or coffee liqueur would be good.
- Even after they've set, these truffles do keep best in cooler environments. They don't need to be refrigerated, but do keep them away from heating elements.
Marisa McClellan is a food writer and canning teacher who lives in Center City Philadelphia. Find more of her food (all cooked up in her 80-square-foot kitchen) at her blog, Food in Jars. Her first cookbook, Food in Jars: Preserving in Small Batches Year-Round, is now available.