Easy Homemade Sparkly Chocolate Truffles

A disaster of epic proportions has befallen me.

My oven has broken.

The timing was particularly crap (please excuse my French) because I was making meringues, and only discovered that the oven had died a horrible death when I tried to put them in.

Therefore, the next week or so will be all about no-cook recipes, cooking on the hob, and Autumn salads.

Today, however, called for something a little more along the lines of comfort food. Thus, I present to you these Homemade Sparkly Chocolate Truffles.

These little beauties are spectacularly easy to make, look utterly beautiful, and taste even better. They also do not require an oven. They would make a lovely gift wrapped up in ribbon!

This recipe makes about 25-30 chocolates.

What you’ll need:

200ml thick double cream

200g good quality chocolate of your choice, broken into chunks (I actually used 100g dark chocolate and 100g milk chocolate, both Green & Blacks. This, I find, gives a slightly sweeter result than using just dark chocolate, but of course it depends on your preference!)

80g light brown sugar

A little pot of edible glitter; I used gold here, but you could make these with white chocolate and use silver glitter to make little Christmassy ‘snowball’ truffles.

You can buy this from stores such as HobbyCraft, or online at Cake Craft World

Equipment:

A saucepan and wooden spoon

Greaseproof or silicon paper

A fridge

Step One:

The base of a chocolate truffle is the ganache. This is the easiest way I have found to make it, and it’s never gone wrong.

First, pour your cream into a saucepan, and add the sugar.

Heat gently, stirring constantly, until it just reaches simmering point. The reason you simmer it is because the heat breaks down the sugar and ensures a good, even distribution.

Simmer for about a minute very lightly, and then take off the heat to cool.

Step Two:

Break your chocolate into small pieces.

Once the cream and sugar mixture has cooled slightly (it just needs a minute off the heat) add your chocolate, giving it a good stir with a spoon until the chocolate has all melted and you are left with a lovely even mixture.

The reason you leave it to cool slightly before adding the chocolate is that the mixture will split if the cream is still at boiling point.

Step Three:

Once the mixture is thoroughly combined, you will be left with a gorgeous, glossy ganache. Scrape it into a bowl, cover it, and pop it into the fridge to cool – this will take a minimum of two hours, and ideally you’d leave it in there for up to about four.

Step Four:

Once your ganache has been chilled for at least two hours, take it out of the fridge.

Now comes the fun part!

Place a square of baking paper or silicon paper onto a plate.

In a small bowl or ramekin, mix up 1/3 cocoa powder and 2/3 edible glitter.

Cover your hands liberally with cocoa.

I warn you, this gets very messy!

Now, using a teaspoon, spoon out a piece of ganache and very lightly roll it into a rough ball shape with your hands. Do not try to work the ganache for more than a few seconds or it will melt and you will not be able to roll it!

Now, place it into the ramekin of glittery cocoa and roll it around with your finger very gently, ensuring the outside of the chocolate is well coated.

Then lightly pick it up and place it on the plate which you have covered in baking or silicon paper. Repeat this until you have used all of your mixture.

Pop into the fridge to harden a little more, and these will be ready to eat in fifteen minutes.

If you are giving them as a gift, you can pop them into a little box filled with tissue paper and wrap it in ribbon. If you intend to eat them all yourself, just put them into an airtight container and they will keep happily in the fridge for up to a couple of weeks or so.

Enjoy!

See you tomorrow.

Love,

Jessy xxx

Do you have any questions you’d like answered? Ever wondered how to make a bed properly, how to cook easy bread from scratch, how to make the perfect cake, how to get tough stains out easily and quickly? My friends, I am rubbish at many things but due to a strange addiction to Mrs Beeton in my early teens and a very accomplished group of friends and family, I have access to a fairly sizeable amount of domestic knowledge. Test me – send me your domestic conundrums and we will see what we can do!