Truffles!!!

I love making truffles and they are so much better made fresh. Most in shops are covered in a hard chocolate shell, and this is hard to do without a machine to temper the chocolate, so for home made ones stick to rolling them in coco powder, dessicated coconut, chocolate shardes or icing sugar, or pipe into cases as I've done. Un-covered the last for about two weeks, if you can resit them for that long!

You will need : 430 grams dark chocolate (if you want to make milk chocolate truffles use 580 grams of milk chocolate, and for white use 730 grams, as these have less coco solids so need more volume to set properly)

180 grams of double cream - to make coffee truffles dissolve four teaspoons of coffee granules into the cream as you heat it. 

60 grams glucose syrup - you can use golden syrup but this has more (lovely) flavour, I'd add vanilla essence with this to create a lovely caramel flavour.

25 grams unsalted butter, very soft but not melted.

30 ml spirit of your choice - or you can use vanilla as mentioned above.

Equipment - one large bowl, one small pan, a round ended knife or metal spoon, pipping bag fitted with a large nozzle, or you can just use the coupler ring with not nozzle if you don't have a big enough icing tube - I use a 1 cm round tube, smaller ones can get clogged up. Weigh everything carefully and get it ready before you start.

Truffle tips - do not refrigerate your truffles, leave them over night to harden at cool room temperature. Refrigeration is bad news for quality chocolate, it's too damp and it will actually shorten their self life and make them bloom.

This is a coco dusted truffle, which I wrapped in gold foil to keep them fresh.

Flavour ideas:

Infuse the cream with spices such as cinnamon, ginger and mace to create spiced truffles. Use 400 grams of dark chocolate and 100 grams of milk.

Black pepper - sounds odd but spices are great with chocolate, I simply grind a large portion of pepper into the cream, and you add pepper to your dusting coco as well.

Christmas puddings - make a brandy truffle then stir in small dried fruits soaked in brandy. Instead of pipping, use a spoon or melon baller to scoop up portions and roll into truffles. Put into petit-four cases and then melt some white chocolate over a bain-maire or in a microwave ( in this case, use cheap and cheerful budget white chocolate) and then drizzle over the Christmas puddings to look like cream. You can even find little cake sprinkles that look like holly leaves and berries and stick them on the top.

These make such a lovely gift for those awkward people who are hard to shop for, buy pretty gift boxes and fill with a mix of chocolates, or use china boxes and pretty cup and saucers bought from charity shops and wrapped up in cellophane and tie with bows to make unique gifts.

The above recipe makes around 70 truffles and it cost me £7, so it's cheaper than buying luxury chocolates, especially if you are a dab hand at making your own boxes from recycled material. If you buy chocolate whole sale and make four or five flavours, you'd spend around £40 but you could make around ten boxes worth, and they would have the personal touch which makes all the difference.