Today, winter officially arrived with a morning rain and afternoon snowstorm. It was just above freezing, so what fell came down in large flakes and quickly covered everything. Fortunately the cloud only took an hour to pass by so the snowpack came in around a half inch. It’s beautiful to look at, but you don’t want to venture out.
Thus, it’s a great day to make truffles! … and eat them too!
A few days ago I went hunting for a really easy raw truffle recipe that would only take a half hour or so from start to finish. I looked around a bit, but didn’t find anything that caught my eye until I visited Lisa’s Raw on $10 a Day (or less!) blog. If you haven’t noticed, that blog has been linked in here for nearly a year! I love her commitment to the blog and how well she puts together the artwork. It’s just fun to read and beautiful to look at.
Yet, anyway, if you scroll back a bit in her blog, you’ll find that on the 2nd, the menu included a dessert – Double Chocolate Truffles! When I saw what she posted, I immediately new that I’d found the truffles I’d been looking for.
Today, everything came together in such a fine way that I got to make this recipe my own. And yes, they are as good as they look – but I couldn’t settle for just eight, so I kind of doubled the recipe. I wanted to give away a few and cut down on the chocolate just a little (I’m virtually out now, … need to visit Raw Vegan Source again). Too much raw chocolate will keep you up all night. So I almost doubled everything that Lisa shared with the world (except the cacao). Here is my version!
Recipe – Raw Chocolate Dipped Truffles:
Truffle balls:
- 1 cup soaked (dried) raw almonds
- ½ cup raisins
- ½ cup (8) medjool dates (pitted)
- 3 tablespoons cacao powder
- Scrapings of the inside of one vanilla bean
- Pinch salt
Chocolate Dip:
- 4 Tablespoons melted raw coconut oil
- 4 Tablespoons raw agave
- 4 Tablespoons Raw cacao powder
Soak a bit more than a cup of almonds for 4-6 hours before starting. Rinse and dry completely so as to not add any water to the mixture (cacao and water don’t mix).
To make the balls, add the almonds, raisins, salt and scrapings from the inside of the vanilla bean into the food processor and grind up. After you’ve worked it a bit, add the dates. You’ll need to play with it a bit in order to really get it broken down nicely. Once it’s nice and smooth, roll into small truffles and place in the freezer for 15-20 minutes. You just want to get them cold, not frozen. Meanwhile, it gives you time to cleanup and put together the dip.
For the dip, add all three ingredients (oil, agave and cacao powder) and quickly mix. It doesn’t take much, but make sure you don’t have lumpy cacao. That makes mixing it up a little harder to do.
After the balls have cooled and your chocolate dip is ready, roll the bottom of the cold truffle through the melted chocolate and place it on parchment paper. The coconut oil should quickly firm up. It might take a couple more minutes in the freezer, but they’ll look like this:
And as you can see from the first picture (way above), I thoroughly enjoyed that treat! The ball is mildly sweet and a soft nutty chew. You have to hunt for the vanilla and the chocolate flavor is tame allowing you to actually discern the raisins. The Chocolate glaze is powerfully dark and rich. It makes you want to suck on it just a bit before chewing through the rest of it.
This is truly a winter time treat!
Oh, I never like throwing out anything – especially when it comes to raw chocolate!
I just happened to have a few soaked almonds left over that I rolled through the bowl that I used for dipping the truffles and I wound up with … turtles!
These were amazing too! These were the first things to disappear. There is something about sweet chocolate on almonds that I just can’t pass up. Now, if I’d just used cacao butter rather than coconut, these would have firmed up at room temperature. But no worries for they disappeared within about five minutes!
These truffles really did mix up fast with no fuss. I’d highly recommend them if you’ve got a craving!
Make and experience joy – these truffles just might help!
