Chocolate Truffle Gift Jars.

When I was budgeting to leave my job and calculating all the expenditures I would have with a new baby, I pretty much had everything covered.  I even managed to budget an allowance for things for myself too.  What I didn’t however take into account was the spending on others.  I’m mostly talking about gifts here.  There are Birthdays, Christmas, Anniversaries, new jobs, new babies, Valentines Day and dinner parties that I can’t bear to turn up empty handed to.  So my next venture is for a homemade luxury present of…

Chocolate Truffle Gift Jars.

Truffles

This recipe is for 3 different flavours of Mint, Coffee & Cardamom and Plain chocolate.  The chocolates are extremely rich with very subtle flavourings so you need only give 4/5 truffle per gift.  The recipe makes 36 truffles in total though, which can be eaten yourself, given as gifts and frozen for whenever you need them.

And making sure to continue my frugality throughout my blog, I will be reusing baby food containers for the gift jars!

Ingredients

Ingredients:

Makes 12 truffles of each flavour

• 300ml Double Cream
• 250g Good Quality Dark Chocolate cut into chunks
• 125g Good quality Milk Chocolate cut into chunks
• Medium Knob of Unsalted Butter (separated into three)
• Salt
• ¼ tsp Peppermint Extract
• 1tbsp instant Coffee
• Crushed seeds of 1 cardamom pod

• 50g Caster Sugar
• 1 drop blue food colouring
• 1 drop green food colouring
• 1 drop of peppermint extract
• 50g chocolate vermicelli
• 125g White Chocolate cut into chunks

Place the following ingredients in three separate bowls for each flavour:

• Coffee
  • 100g dark chocolate
  • Small knob of butter
  • Pinch of salt
  • Finely crushed seeds of 1 cardamom pod
• Plain
  • 100g dark chocolate
  • Small knob of butter
  • Pinch of salt
• Mint
  • 50g dark
  • 50 gmilk
  • Pinch of salt
  • ¼ tsp Peppermint Extract

Heat up your cream 100ml at a time (for each flavour)until hot but careful not to boil. For the Plain and Mint truffle, pour directly over your ingredients and leave to sit for a few minutes.  For the coffee add you tbsp of instant coffee to the cream in the pan until dissolved.  Then cover your ingredients and leave to stand for a few minutes also.  After a few minutes the chocolate should have slowly melted, now stir each bowl until fully mixed.  Leave to cool a little then cover with cling film and place in the fridge to set for at least 3hrs.

Coatings

To Coat the Truffles:

For the mint truffles.  Put the caster sugar into a pan along with 1tsp of water, 1 drop of Peppermint essence and a small drop each of blue and green food colouring.  Let this bubble of a high heat for 4-5 minutes watching so it doesn’t burn.  Get some greaseproof paper ready in a small bowl and pour your hot sugar mixture into this.  Put in the fridge to allow it to cool completely (approx 30mins) *WARNING hot sugar mixture is like molten lava, so be extremely careful when handling it*

Once cooled and set you will have a hard boiled sweet like consistency.  Wrap this up in another layer of greaseproof paper and a clean tea towel.  Then smash up into small crystal dust pieces and place into a separate bowl and then back into the fridge until ready to be used.

When the truffle mixtures have set completely get the following ready for the coatings.

• 1 large baking tray or plate covered with greaseproof paper
• 1 bowl filled with Chocolate vermicelli
• 1 bowl of your green mint crystal dust
• 1 bowl of melted white chocolate
• 1 wooden skewer/metal fork

To make you basic truffle ball…

Boil water in a kettle and pour into a mug.  Put a teaspoon into the mug to heat up.  Scoop up the chocolate and roll into your hands to make a wall nut size shape.  Dip your teaspoon back into the hot mug between each stage to keep it warm.  Moulding the chocolates by hand gets really messy as the chocolate melt but its perfect for coating the chocolates.

For your mint truffle mixture, roll each moulded slightly melted ball in the green mint coating.  Then place on the prepared baking tray.  Do the same for your Plain chocolates and Vermicelli.

For your coffee truffle.  Make sure the white chocolate has cooled slightly.  Then skewer (or fork) each moulded ball and dip into the melted chocolate.  Using a separate fork, slowly remove the skewered chocolate and transfer to the baking sheet.

Put you tray with all of the chocolates into the fridge to cool and set again for 20mins.

Once the white chocolate has set, melt the remaining milk chocolate from earlier.

We now want to decorate the white chocolate with milk chocolate strokes.  You can do this by flicking the melted chocolate from a teaspoon over the truffles.  However for more precision you can make a small piping bag and pipe the lines on.  You can find out how to make one from my friend Graces blog HERE (very wonderful cupcake decorator).

Again return the chocolates to the fridge for one final cool and set.

Once set, your truffles are now ready to be devoured!

Enjoy with some coffee

For the gift wrap…

• Pretty patterned paper
• Glue
• Scissors
• White card
• White string
• Clean, peeled and sterilised baby jars (or similar).

These jars are really easy to make.  Soak your leftover baby jars in boiling water for an hour.  This should loosen the paper wrapping so it’s easily peeled off.  Scrub off any details on the jar lids with a metal scourer.  You can then sterilise your jars and lids through sterilising fluid, baking in the oven, putting through a steamer or running through a baby bottle sterilise.

Once dry and sterilised you can decorate.  Cut circles of the paper to fit the lid and stick on with glue.  Make little gift tags with small bits of card with a strip of your matching paper along the bottom.  Then make a hole in the top and thread through your string and tie around your jar.  I also made a truffle key which I printed and stuck to the back of my tags.  The graphic for this is available to print HERE.

Gift Tag with Chocolate Key

Depending what size jar and truffles you made, fill your jars then cover with the lid and keep refrigerated until you give them for a gift or eat yourself. These can be stored for 4 days or one month in the freezer.

Happy Gifting!