Chocolate Truffles

I decided to make some chocolate truffles to put in little gift bags at Christmas along with the gingerbread people from the previous post. I'd never made truffles before but it looked pretty easy.

I decided to adapt a recipe I found on the BBC Good Food website. All you need is:

280g dark chocolate

284ml pot double cream

50g butter

Flavourings: I used orange juice and a sample size bottle of Biscotti Baileys. You only need a tablespoon or so of each

Coatings: I used cocoa powder, icing sugar and chocolate flakes (actually hot chocolate from Hotel Chocolat, that is more like flakes than powder).

Break up the chocolate into squares. Put the cream and butter into a saucepan and heat gently until the butter melts and the cream reaches simmering point. Remove from heat, then pour over the chocolate. Stir the chocolate and cream together until you have a smooth mixture.

That's the basic recipe! What I did next was divide the three mixture into three bowls. I left one plain, added some orange juice to another and a little bit of Baileys to the third. Leave them to cool in the fridge.

I then placed my three coatings in different bowls - cocoa powder, icing sugar and chocolate flakes.

The easiest way to make truffles would be to use a melon baller to get a nice smooth ball. I don't have one however, so I used a combination of a spoon and my hands to roll the chocolate mixture into balls. I dipped each one into a different coating.

Then I put a selection into a little bag and tied it with ribbon. I also added a label (not shown in photo) describing the three flavours. I did find that these needed to be kept in the fridge or they melted very quickly!