Making chocolate truffles

I own many many cook books, I've decided that It's about time that I start to use them.

It's my friend's birthday tomorrow and she's the biggest chocoholic I know so I thought that I'd make something from 'The Book of Chocolate' for her.

I decided on chocolate truffles.

You can put anything in the filling really, heat some sultanas in some rum and you can do rum and raisin ones. I wasn't sure what the others liked so to be safe I chose to do:

1) almond & marshmallow
2) plain almond ones

There's many recipes for the filling of chocolate truffles out there, some requiring egg and more complicated cooking methods - me I'm lazy, so I found the easiest recipe to try.

Melt 400g of good dark cooking chocolate + half a cup of thickened cream in a bowl over boiling water.

Once melted combine your filling.

Pictured is the chopped almonds, mix well then set aside to cool down.

Place in fridge and refrigerate for 2 hours until the filling is firm.

2hrs later....

Put on a pair of gloves and roll filling into bite sized balls, then place in freezer for 15 minutes.

The next part gets a bit messy so no photos between this stage and the final product. From here you can:
1) dip balls in milk/dark chocolate (then add a swirl of white later on)
2) press them into crushed almonds
3) decorate with milk chocolate swirls
4) press into coconut
5) Dust with icing sugar & coco powder
The options are endless.

The final product...
Can be messy to make but very fun.
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On a random note I also made cupcakes today after seeing Helen's post.