Here I was standing in the middle of my cooking area holding in my hand once again a heavy bar of expensive dark chocolate that my wonderful, handsome sometimes-clueless boyfriend gave to me for some reason, wondering one more time what the heck was I going to do with it as I stuck it back in the fridge to live another day.
This chocolate bar has been the running joke in the house for the past three months, because we were all dumbfounded when this sweet man brought it home to me. Don’t get me wrong I love chocolate and I love that he surprises me with special treats, but Sheesh! This was one heck of an expensive bar of chocolate not to mention it weighed two pounds, so it’s not something one can eat in one sitting.
I even asked him why would he first buy something that expensive and second something that big and his answer is always “I thought you would like it.” How can one argue with such logic as that from a man? So the chocolate sat in the fridge to be nibbled on here and there and even added a bit to some chili I made one night, but still no idea what to do with the majority of this bar.
Needless to say it sat there in it’s pretty brown and gold package with its fancy Italian letters, just mocking me every time I went into the fridge to get something else and have to move it out the way.
It wasn’t until one night when I was watching my favorite cooking show “Master Chef” and they were making chocolate truffles in the elimination round and they made it look so easy and here I thought it was hard as heck to make chocolate truffles. Then begin my quest to find a recipe that would be easy for someone like me to make, and oh boy who knew there would be thousands upon thousands of recipes in all flavors of chocolate truffles.
Well after a week of searching I found two recipes that filled my needs though I did have to adapt them to fit them to my needs and my ingredients. The first one I found looking through my trusty 1975 edition of the Joy of Cooking, which was for just the basic Chocolate Truffles and the second one was found at the blog Crazy for Crust that was for a Mexican Chocolate Truffle, I picked that one because it had hot pepper in there and I love the taste of dark chocolate with a bit of spice.
Spicy Chocolate Truffles
- 12 ounces Extra Dark Chocolate (I used Italian Venchi 60%)
- 1 cup Heavy Cream
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
- 1 teaspoon Cinnamon
- 1 ½ teaspoon Red Pepper
- Cut or grate chocolate into pieces and set aside
- Place cream in a small pot and heat just before it comes to a boil
- Pour heated cream over chocolate and stir until chocolate is melted and smooth
- Stir in your flavoring, vanilla, cinnamon and red pepper
- Chill mix for at least 2 hours or overnight if you like
- Using a Tablespoon unless you have a melon ball scoop or a cookie scoop
- Roll in the palm of your hands to make uniform balls
- Place on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper (I used foil wrap so that works too)
- After making all the truffles, roll in an equal mixture of unsweetened cocoa and cinnamon
- Store in a covered container in the refrigerator and take out to soften when ready to enjoy
***recipe called for cayenne pepper all I had on hand was red pepper flakes that I ground into a powder…go me
Basic Chocolate Truffles
Print Recipe
NOTE: The first recipe from the Joy of Cooking called for butter and the second one didn’t and I found that very interesting because when it was time to roll them into balls I found that the one called for butter didn’t work really well in making uniform balls and got really messy as I was rolling them. The Mexican truffles kept a much better form. So from now on I won’t use butter in the recipe.
Life lesson learnt don’t be afraid of that bar of chocolate sitting in the fridge waiting to be devoured, you might just be surprised how good it can be.
Life Food and Me 
This looks really good… If I can find a little time I’ll give it a try!
Great let me know how they turned out.
Since I’m allergic to milk, I’ll replace the cream with coconut milk. I’ll definitely let you know how it works out 🙂
oooh,yum! now why didn’t I think of that, yes please let me know how that works. Now you got me thinking maybe I will try the Almond milk I like.
If you try the almond milk, let me know how that turns out. I usually use the canned coconut milk (not coconut cream, which is sweet) as a substitute for cream because it has a lot of fat in it as does cream. There is also a canned coconut milk lite, with less fat, but I prefer to use the richer, denser, creamier coconut milk as a substitute for cream. Sometimes I even skim off the thicker fattier part of the canned cocnut milk and just use that.
the spiciness sounds divine
It was really good with the dark chocolate and then a finish of spice, I plan of adding a little more spice to this because I like a little heat in my chocolate