Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Who Said Truffles Had To Be Round?

2008 12 19 031

Twas the night before Christmas (or the week before in my case),
when a fellow cashier and I were standing around at our registers wondering where all the yuletide shoppers were. In that fateful moment she whipped out some of those free recipe cards you find littering the floor of some major retailers around the holidays. You know, the kind the little Sample Ladies hand out and somehow the little naughty children get a hold of them and throw them all over the floor for friendly cashiers like me to pick up?

Yeah, those ones. So she handed me one and I skimmed it at lightning fast speed because I'm not usually into these froo froo holiday recipes and whammo!~I saw one that only took three ingredients. Three! How simple can that be, I thought.

So as I made my maiden voyage into the land of Truffles, I took some photos, because I thought maybe you all needed a laugh.

Join me for a journey of unexpected surprises.

And go here for the actual recipe that you can print out for your own maiden voyage of Truffledom.


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There you have it, the 3 Musketeers, if you will. A deadly combination if I ever saw one. But I will warn you: a simple ingredient list doesn't always mean a simple recipe. You'll notice on that innocent red card that this recipe is actually called "Easy OREO Truffles." Ha. That's a good one. But don't be disheartened yet.

Step 1: crush the oreos. Learn from my mistakes young grasshoppers.
2008 12 19 008
Crushing oreos in a plastic baggie with a sharp meat tenderizer isn't the best idea I've ever had. I got three whacks in before I notice the gaping holes in the bag. Duh.

So I pushed my laziness aside and got out the Big Daddy of crushing.
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It made short work of making these beauties into crumbs.


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That's the stuff that dreams are made of.


Step 2: Add the cream cheese to the crumbs and try not to eat too much of this.
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Step 3: Break up BOTH boxes of chocolate into squares and melt it.
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Here's where you have a choice. Microwave or stovetop. When it comes to melting chocolate, I always choose stovetop because it is inevitable that when I put chocolate to melt in the microwave, it will burn and smell very badly for the remainder of the day. Maybe you don't have this problem. If not, nuke that chocolate to your heart's content.

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Melt the chocolate, and stir it almost constantly. You don't want any of that chocolate goodness to burn to the bottom of the pan. And you want it consistently hot because the purpose of this is for dipping. Which it turns out, I am not an expert at.
Step 4: Make 1 inch balls with the cream cheese/crumb mixture.
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If I ever make this again, I would chill this mixture for about an hour before I formed it into balls for dipping. This was messy and uncooperative. It was at this point that I started to doubt any culinary abilities I've acquired.

Step 5: Put some melted chocolate in a bowl and get two forks.
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This is how you will dip the balls. Work very quickly because the chocolate will be cooling at breakneck speeds. And the two forks are not for practicing any kind of ninja moves. You'll need both to perform a move much like Mr. Miyagi to roll your cream cheese balls around in there.
Step 6: Don't worry if your truffles don't look nice. Just get them on the wax paper.
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And here's a tip: put a cookie sheet under that wax paper. You'll need it later. I learned that the hard way.

Step 7: Sprinkle the remaining crumbs onto the truffles and put in the fridge for an hour or so.
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And here's the part that makes it all worth it.

2008 12 19 031

These tasted so darn good, I momentarily forgot all about the holes in the plastic ziploc, the gooey hands covered in cream cheese/crumb mixture that made it near impossible to take pictures. I almsot forgot the Mr. Miyagi type moves it took to roll them in the melted chocolate.

Because round or not, these truffles are fantastico to eat.

6 comments:

Beth said...

One word: YUM!!

These remind me of cake balls, only much easier. Maybe. You've got me scared with your gooey finger story. I might just have to try these, they look amazing.

Thanks!

beth

Anonymous said...

You mean evil woman! Why in the world would you put that on here when one of my New Year's resolutions is to lose weight??? ;)

I hope you and the kids are doing well.

Amanda

Mom, Dad and All Those Boys said...

Those thoughtless Oreo people forgot to mention a most important step in the truffle making process: chill the truffle mixture for several hours before forming into balls. Really cuts down on sticky hands and they turn out round. Either way, an extremely divine confection.

Sprittibee said...

Those look really good, but being pregnant and soon to be needing physical therapy to get back in shape, there's no way I'm touching them until I'm back in my pre-baby clothes... from like 2 years before I got pregnant even. I'm counting on breastfeeding to take the poundage off.

Anonymous said...

This looks so DECADENT! And so easy to make too! The pictures are amazing and boy, all that chocolate is soooo tempting. I've marked this up in Stumbleupon! I hope it gets lots of hits. You deserve it!

Meesa said...

YUMYUMYUMYUMYUM!!!! These look so good!!!