Birthday: Cookie Dough Truffles

Yesterday was my birthday, so half of this week was spent cooking up a storm in preparation. It was very exciting. I spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings exercising my right arm and shoulder muscles by creaming butter and sugar together on the first two days, and beating single cream until it was softly whipped on the last. (I did cheat in the end and use the blender, but not until I'd been beating it non-stop for forty minutes. Dedication.)

The first recipe was Love & Olive Oil's chocolate chip cookie dough truffles. They looked easy enough to make in bulk for school; also, they looked delicious. They were pretty easy to make. I also bought 100 of the tiniest muffin cups known to humankind, so they were easy to distribute to students yesterday.

Cookie Dough Truffles

(Printable Recipe)

Makes about 90 tiny dough balls

1 cup butter

1.5 cups brown sugar

2.5 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/3 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

70g chocolate bar

For coating:

250g chocolate

Leave the butter to soften. Beat together with the sugar until light and fluffy. (I did this by hand, and as a result my arm muscles are looking pretty spectacular at the moment.)

Add the flour, salt, baking powder, milk and vanilla to the creamed butter and keep stirring. If you are doing this by hand, find something else you can do without using your hands, like reading or watching TV, and just keep on stirring for as long as you can.

Snap the chocolate bar into the smallest pieces possible (I jumped on mine for a bit) and fold the bits into the mixture. Cover the dough and chill for one hour.

Remove the dough from the fridge and roll into teeny tiny balls. I made 72 - the amount that would fit on my tray - and had twice this much dough left. (I gave Tom the other half and he grated some coconut into it.) I haven't made those into balls yet but I estimate we've got at least twenty more.

72 dough balls in all their glory.

 Put the balls in the freezer for thirty minutes, until they are hard. I didn't have time to cover them just then so I removed them from the freezer after that time and left them in the fridge for a day.

Snap the other 250g chocolate and melt it in the microwave or in a double-boiler.

Using toothpicks, pick up each ball, dip it in the melted chocolate, and tap it on the side of the container to get rid of any excess drips. The original recipe covered the truffle entirely in chocolate whereas mine look more like buckeyes.

The truffles dry pretty quickly. Refrigerate until needed.