New Years chocolate truffles!

Making truffles is a sticky little business, but luckily it begins with much ease (and no stickiness).

Commence your chocolatey adventure by purchasing three simple ingredients.

Ingredients

150g chocolate

Dark chocolate works better due to its higher melting point, but you can of course take a risk and opt for the very melty milk chocolate, so long as you don't mind getting it everywhere when rolling

150g double cream

Half a teaspoon of butter

Making the mixture

Chop the chocolate into small chunks, so that it's quicker to melt.

Pour the double cream into a milk pan and gently warm over the hob.

When tepid, add the small nib of butter and lightly stir it into the milk, so that it melts.

The milk does not need to boil immensely - when hot, pour it over the chopped chocolate.

Stir the chocolate in its buttery-milk sauce until you are left with a smooth mixture.

Chill in the fridge until solid but mouldable.

If you have used milk chocolate, it is ideal to let the mix chill over night as it has a very low melting point.

Rolling the truffles

When the mixture is chilled, prepare a tray lined with grease-proof paper to place the freshly-rolled truffles onto.

Wet your hands with cold water and dry, so that your hands are not too warm, and therefore won't melt the truffles.

Use a spoon to extract a small sphere of the chocolate mix and roll quickly into shape in your hands. Place on the tray and repeat until you have rolled all of the mixture.

Put the truffles into a freezer to harden.

Coating the truffles

The 'hard' way

If you wish to coat your chocolates in chocolate, prepare to get your hands chocolatey!

Place a (melt-proof) bowl of chocolate into a bowl of boiled water.

If you are tempering your chocolate, place two-thirds of the chocolate into the melt-proof bowl, adding the remaining third when the first two-thirds have melted into the mixture. If you are not tempering it, add all of the chocolate to the bowl. Tempering the chocolate makes it glossy, rather than matte.

When melted, either pour the chocolate over the truffles or dunk the truffles into the chocolate (using a fork of spoon, if you do not wish to alter their spherical shape) to coat.

The 'easy' way

Mix cocoa powder with icing sugar and dust the rolled truffles!

Alternatively, roll the truffles in chopped nuts or desiccated coconut.

Enjoy, and happy holidays!