Raw Chocolate Truffles

Make your own dark chocolate truffles
What could be easier than crumbling up your leftover cake and stirring in some of your own, hand-made luxurious dark chocolate to make these moreish mouthfuls. The beauty of this recipe is you can make various flavours either by the choice of cake crumbs you use, like we did with the choc-orange cake crumbs, or you can use plain cake crumbs and add flavours into the truffle mix. Experiment further by adding nuts, raisins, cherries or other dried fruit as well as spirits such as brandy or rum, or your favourite liqueur. There’s no excuse now not to make some healthier, cream-free truffles.

Organic Raw Cacao Butter 250g (Sussex Wholefoods)

100g Cacao Butter

Organic Raw Cacao Powder 500g (Sussex Wholefoods)

6 Tbsp Cacao Powder (plus a little extra for dusting later.)

Organic Coconut Sugar 1kg (Sussex Wholefoods)

2 Tbsp Coconut Sugar

Fine Pink Himalayan Salt 1kg (Sussex Wholefoods)

Pinch of salt

Organic Ground Almonds 1kg (Sussex Wholefoods)

2 tbsp Ground Almonds

Other Ingredients

150g cake crumbs, mixed or single flavour.

Method

1. Lay some greaseproof paper/baking parchment onto a flat surface such as a chopping board, tea tray or baking tray.
2.  Create a Bain Marie using a Pyrex/heat proof glass bowl half resting inside a saucepan of water.Tip: the saucepan should be smaller in diameter than the glass bowl. The water should not touch the base of the saucepan. Once the water has come to the boil, turn off the heat.
3.  Break any large chunks of Cacao butter into smaller pieces and add to the bowl. Stir quickly, but smoothly, until all have melted.
4.  Remove the bowl carefully from the water using a tea towel under its base, in order to absorb any moisture caused by the steaming liquid. Then add the Cacao Butter and your chosen sweetener. Mix thoroughly until you have a smooth, glossy finish. Now’s the time to add any liquid flavourings.
5.  Put the leftover cake and crumbs in a separate bowl. Break any large pieces into fine crumbs using your finger tips, so that the mixture is evenly sized. Add any nuts or fruit at this stage.
6.  Finally pour over the melted chocolate and mix throughly until evenly coated in chocolate. Now put on some disposable gloves (polythene or vinyl).
7.  You will need the mix to moist enough to mould in your hands without cracking, but not so moist as to not be able to hold itself into a ball shape. We found that our mix was a little too moist as we only had just 120g of cake crumbs. We therefore added a some ground almonds, a little at a time and tested the mix by attempting to form a ball.
8.  Take a couple of teaspoons of mixture and form into balls. Place each onto your greaseproof paper.
9.  Allow the Truffles to cool down completely. Put on another pair of disposable gloves. Sprinkle some Cacao Powder onto a plate or into a bowl and then roll each truffle through the powder. You can be fairly random as you want a rough effect. Now the truffles are ready to gift wrap or alternatively store somewhere cool until you are ready to eat or pack.