Kids Cooking Thursday: Aztec Truffle Cupcakes

Using the leftover mixture from the Aztec Truffles, we whipped up an .87c chocolate cake mix into cupcakes, and placed a tiny ball of truffle inside each one before baking. This is not a recipe to make with children if you are messphobic, or want photos of the process. They tasted great though!

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Kids Cooking Thursday: Chocolate Cheesecake Truffles

Just in time for your NYE parties...

These were snaffled up too quickly for me to get a photo of the finished product, and of course, were too chocolatey in the making of, so you'll have to use your imagination for these. Or alternatively, look back at the time we made these in strawberry flavour or regular flavour. The only difference in these were that I bought Chocolate Creme Oreos instead of the other flavours. I have to try these with the peanut butter and chocolate flavoured ones next I think...

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Kids Cooking Thursday: Aztec Truffles

Adapted from Allrecipes.

Aztec Truffles
200g Chilli Dark Chocolate (we used Lindt)
100g Maya Gold 55% solids chocolate (use regular semi dark if you can't get this exotic Green & Blacks flavour)
1 can sweetened condensed milk
good pinch Dutch cinnamon
cocoa (or pareils or coconut) to roll

Melt chocolate with sweetened condensed milk on lowest microwave setting in a heatproof bowl. Try 1 minute on LOW and then 30sec bursts. When melted and smooth, stir in cinnamon. Cover and chill 2 to 3 hours or until firm.
Shape mixture into small balls and roll in cocoa.
Refrigerate in a tightly covered dish.

Sorry for no in process pictures today again, but rolling sticky balls of chocolate goop between one's palms is not conductive to responsible camera handling. If your truffles are destined for the family cookie plate, or you have slightly older kids home from school already, you might want to pass that job to them. Master Two was quite adept at shaking the dish with the truffles and cocoa in it, and Miss Five was quick to point out any that weren't fully coated. Both had a good stir of the mixture, and enjoyed the tasty job of breaking the blocks of chocolate down into pieces. So even though our truffles were destined to be a gift, and needed to be adult rolled for the slightly improved shape and size uniformity, there was still lots to be done for little fingers.

It goes to show, never judge a recipe as too complex before giving it a try. Odds are, even the youngest child will find a step or two they can help with.


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Chocolate doesn't make the world go around, but it makes the trip worthwhile

Here is another recipe from the Cooks Challenge thread at the Taste forums. I swear those girls are trying to make me fat! Not to mention depressed, as this totally failed for me. It's a long messy story, involving flying pie dishes, crying four year olds, and globs of chocolate on my phone. I could give you my method, and break it down to where I went wrong, along with all the gory results, but I'd really rather mop the floors and then go wash the berries and chocolate out of my hair. So here's the real recipe, and a few hints at the end.

Chocolate Berry Truffle Tart
150g Oreos. (We used half Chocolate Creme, and half Strawberry)
120g unsalted butter, melted
300ml thickened cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
250g good-quality dark chocolate, roughly chopped
425g can mixed berries in syrup
3 tbs icing sugar

Drain the berries, reserving syrup. Weigh berries, and add back enough syrup to make up 275g.

Lightly grease the base and sides of four 8cm x 2cm loose-bottomed tart pans.

Process biscuits in a food processor until fine crumbs form. Add melted butter and process until well combined. Press biscuit mixture firmly over bases of tart pans to cover. Chill while you make filling.

Heat 200ml cream in a pan with vanilla over low heat and bring to just below boiling point. Remove from heat, add chocolate and stir until melted. Transfer to a bowl and cool completely.

Using a fork, crush half the berries in a bowl. Spread over biscuit bases, then cover with chocolate mixture. Cover and freeze for 2-3 hours until firm. (Remove from freezer 30 minutes before serving.)

Combine icing sugar and remaining berries in a bowl. Crush with a fork until sugar dissolves. Press mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl and discard seeds.

Whip remaining 100ml cream and swirl through berry puree. Dust tarts with cocoa - for a decorative pattern, place a paper doily over plate, dust with cocoa, then remove doily. Top with berry cream.

TIP: Use the loose bottom tart pans like it says. Otherwise you'll need to use too much force to get the biscuit goodness out and your dish may become airbourne.

Make four, don't try and make one big one. Otherwise you will need a lot longer freezing time, and your layers will be sloppy. Making it impossible to plate attractively, and making a much larger mess if indeed you tart does end up airbourne and/or upside down on the floor.

If all else fails, Grab a spoon, glop it into bowls, scrape curls of the base on top, and call it Deconstructed Truffle Tart, or just gloopy chocolate pudding (Master Five's suggestion). Regardless of how it looks, it'll still taste good.

Cheesecake Truffles

When I heard that Stephanie over at Dispensing Happiness was having a birthday theme for this month's blog party, I knew I had the perfect thing lined up to cook for her. It was simple, and delicious, and if my kids were scared of the noise the food processor makes, they could have pretty much made these themselves. Stephanie loves cheesecake, and this is the perfect bitesized version.

Take one block of cream cheese (250g). Use it at room temperature, unless it is 24°C in your kitchen, then you might need it a little colder. Put it in your food processor (or someone else's, I'm not fussy) with 2-3 packs of Oreos. I used cheap imitation oreos. It still tasted great. Whizz up until you get a smooth mixture. Roll into little balls, and chill. Or it your kitchen is enjoying the start of beautiful warm spring weather, chill, then roll into balls, then chill again.

Melt some chocolate and coat the balls with it. I didn't have enough chocolate, so I mixed in some Freckles (chocolate discs with hundreds and thousands on the top) that I had leftover from making the teacups the other day. Then I ran out of that mix, so I bought another bag of Freckles. That's why some are bumpier than others. I brought these, with the teacups, to my niece's 13th birthday party, so they are doubly birthday-ified.

Go check out the round up!

Malibu & Coconut Truffles

Mmmm, chocolate...

Ok, so I almost managed to follow this recipe. Everything except the outside coating.
This is from Taste.Com.Au, and they are supposed to have a white chocolate coating with coconut. I used dark chocolate because that's what my sister likes, and I made these for her birthday. (Yes, I know the kids and I made her fudge too - it's her birthday, and I like to cook ok? And I like to cook sweet things. Especially when I can give them away and not have them sitting around the house taunting me until I eat them.)

As you can see above, I coated them all in dark chocolate, then I rolled five in coconut (the bright white ones reflecting the camera flash glare), five in a mixture of cocoa and icing sugar (because dark choc is bitter enough without adding pure cocoa) and two were rolled in very fine crunchy cake crumbs, from the failed parts of the mud cake I baked earlier.

This was the most time consuming, fiddly, finicky recipe I'd ever used. It took 4 days, and the centres still never firmed up properly. I had to coat these by leaving the tray in the freezer, pulling them out one at a time, then putting the finished product straight back into the freezer on another tray. The filling tasted great, there was just too much alcohol for it to set properly. I'd use it again, as it's a great flavour combination, but I think I'll provide strawberries and other fruit, and use it as a dessert fondue recipe. She's just lucky she's worth it, that's all I can say.

Kids Cooking Thursday: Chocolate Truffles

Chocolate Truffles
1 Can Sweetened Condensed Milk
1 Pkt Marie biscuits (or other sweet plain biscuits)
1 cup Dessicated Coconut + extra for coating
1 1/2 Tbsp Cocoa

Crush biscuits finely.
In a bowl add crushed biscuits, cocoa and coconut. Mix well.
Add condensed milk. Mix.
Roll mixture into balls and roll in extra coconut.
Put in fridge to set.

Miss Two and Master Three had a ball making these. Not quite literally, since they haven't gotten the hang of rolling balls in the palms yet - Miss Two was either making logs or just squashing them into patties, but Master Three tried, he just kept using his fingertips instead of his palms. I got confused when measuring out the ingredients because I'd just used my tbsp measure for something else, so used my tsp measure instead. Include my dodgy maths skills, being 33 weeks PG, and having two toddlers yell at me from the kitchen door wanting to start cooking, and somehow I ended up with 3 tbsp of cocoa instead. That could have been quite disasterous if we were using strong, dark, dutch cocoa, but luckily we were all out of that, and using Cadbury instead. So instead of bitter truffles, we've got very chocolate-y truffles. It was all I could do to get Miss Two to even try to make balls, and not just eat the mixture. Can't say I blame her though - I "cleaned" my palms off once we were done, and it was tasty.

Makes 47 of varying sizes. Probably more if no one eats the mix as they go along.

This is going to be one of the activities for Master Three's birthday "cooking" party. So we had to test the recipe, right? I'm thinking for 9 kids, I'd probably make a double batch. Then they could have a few to take home too. If the adults at the party don't eat them all first!