Chocolate Truffles – to go with the Red Wine

When you’re sitting around the campfire, there’s nothing better than chocolate to go with the Red Wine.  Yes, you could go out and buy a block of chocolate, but where’s the fun in that.  Plus one or two pieces is all you really need, the rest may as well be added straight to the hips.  My friend Jen (my goto person for good recipes), sent me this wonderful recipe for truffles, so I thought I’d give them a go.

Takes about an hour to make them, and you get a dozen or so, depending on how big you make them …

The finished product, not the most professional looking truffles, but good for my first attempt.  The ones rolled in cacao definitely look better than the ones rolled in the drinking chocolate or coconut

RECIPE*

• 1/2 cup raw cacao butter, melted
• 1/2 cup raw cashews
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 1 cup raw cacao powder
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• pinch of sea salt
• shredded coconut, powdered goji berries, raw cacao powder (optional)

1. In a food processor process cashews, melted cacao butter and maple syrup until smooth.
2. Add cacao powder, vanilla and salt, process until well mixed and smooth.
3. Chill in the freezer for 20 – 40 minutes, the more chilled the mix, the easier it is to roll into balls.  Don’t do what I did and leave it in the freezer for too long, it was a pain in the butt trying to break bits off to roll into the balls.
4. Once chilled, shape into balls with your hands, then roll into your choice of shredded coconut, powdered goji berries or cacao powder.

The goji berries were a good idea – at least it sounded that way!  I put some through the food processor to make into powder, if I’d rolled the balls in it straight away it would have been fine, but I wasn’t ready and left the powder sitting on the counter for an hour or so, there seemed to be enough moisture in the powder that it all stuck together.  I tried dehydrating it for a few hours, but nothing happened, still a gluttonous mess, so I gave up and just used coconut and chocolate drink mix.

On a positive note though, ground up goji berries are really good in muesli.

The ones in the book, definitely look better than mine, but hey, I’m taking them bushwalking, how perfect do they have to be?

I’ll give the recipe another go (what else do you do with the raw cacao butter that’s left) and try to make them more visually appealing so I can take them to the next dinner party.

I’m not a fan of dark chocolate, but my son, James is and he thought they were fantastic!

*Vegan Raw, page 61.