Yes, You Can: Dairy-Free Christmas Cookie #5: Chocolate Truffles

Yes, you can make a mistake when posting Dairy-Free Christmas Cookies - you can forget to post the Chocolate Truffles!

My daughter pointed this out to me this afternoon, so I'd better set things straight post-haste.

The truth is that these little chocolate delights are not so much a recipe as they are a solution to the problem of having too much chocolate cake in the house.

Too much cake? Is that like too much money? Who could imagine such a thing back when we had two teenagers in the house?  But remember that Dairy-Free Chocolate Cake posted last week? I baked up several versions in the effort to get the recipe right, and even after feeding it to guests and neighbors, a week later we still had half a cake sitting around getting dried out.

So I turned it into truffles. We'll just pretend it's a real recipe.


Recipe: Chocolate Truffles

Half a Chocolate Cake, stale and boring
about a cup chocolate chips, melted
1/2 to 1 cup of any seedless fruit jam, preferably the "no added sugar" type
A splash of rum, brandy, whiskey or a liquor

Crumble and smush as much of the stake cake as you can fit into your food processor, and turn it into crumbs.
Add the melted chocolate and jam, and process that, too. If your stale cake has frosting or filling, you'll need less jam. You want a heavy dough nearly as thick as Play-Doh. Then add enough liquid spirits to make it interesting. Not too much, or your dough will get sticky.

You can pretty much add as much chocolate as you want, because when chilled, the melted chocolate hardens and then remains solid at room temperature, holding the truffles together. No one will complain that your truffles are too chocolaty. This is a good way to use up any old squares of baking chocolate that have turned rusty or perhaps melted at some point as chocolate does before we can get it home from the store here in Arizona. Just melt it all again and process it with the cake crumbs.

Once you have everything processed together - and it does not need to be completely smooth - scoop out little balls with a melon baller or roll between your palms. Then roll the truffles in any sort of sugar, powdered cocoa, grated chocolate, toasted coconut or ground nuts. Or press half a walnut or pecan on top of each ball, and dip the bottom in sugar. If you are really having fun, you can also dip the truffles in melted chocolate.

Chill truffles in the refrigerator until firm, then store loosely covered in a dry place.

Dairy-free Chocolate Truffles for Christmas - yes, you can make something wonderful with your left-over cake!