Chocolate Orange And/or Rum Truffles for Christmas!

As promised here is my family Christmas truffle recipe. When I was making these this weekend I decided to make Chocolate orange ones... But I'll show you where to add your splash of Rum to make them into Rum truffles if you so wish :)

These truffles make fantastic Christmas Gifts, but are also great all year round! Have a look at my other Instructables for other sweets treats and wacky creations.

Step 1: Wotcha Gonna Need!

Right then:
1 Jam Swiss roll (make sure it DOESN'T have cream in it)
Bar of either yellow or natural Marzipan
2 big tablespoons of Strawberry Jam (or if you feel like it, shreadless Orange marmalade)
Either 2 bars of Milk chocolate, Plain chocolate or a bar of each
Cocoa powder (not drinking chocolate)
Chocolate vermicelli
Orange natural food flavouring/or\ Tripple Sec / Cointreau OR Rum

Hardware:

Saucepan
Pyrex bowl
Cuttlery
Mixing bowl
Non-Latex-Non-powdered gloves
Plates
Spatula

Optionals:
Petit fours cake cases
Terrys Chocolate Orange (remember it's not Terrys, It's mine!)

Step 2: IMPORTANT! No Biological Warfare Please! Scrub Up!

See this REALLY annoys me, when someone makes something for you to CONSUME and they don't bother to wash their hands before hand... So I have decided to make a point of a few things that TV Chefs or whatnot don't seem to be able to do

# Remove any rings/ Jewellery that may come in contact with the food
# Wash your hands before you cook or after you touch your face
# After handling Eggs, its good practice to wash your hands (Stops the spread of Salmonella and such)
# DO NOT Lick or taste off a spoon THEN put it back into the bowl you took the sample from... EWW... If I wanted your germs I would kiss you!


Before I start sounding like a rambling germ freak, I'm sure you'll agree this is all common sense... But some people just don't ...get... that its not hygienic

Step 3: Marzipan + Swiss Roll = Yum!

If you haven't already, cut your Marzipan cut your bar in half so you have ROUGHLY 250g's I go on a rule of thumb basis... One Swiss roll to half a bar of Marzipan.

Place your Swiss roll and your Marzipan in a mixing bowl and try to mix together... For this I cut both into smaller chunks with a fork and kept on mashing until it looked like it had mixed together.

It's now time to lob in two nice big tablespoon fulls of Strawberry jam (the jam without the bits in) and give it another mix!

(if you are making the orange truffles, I added strawberry jam... but I bet marmalade would be equally as nice)

Step 4: Mmmmm Chocolate!

Death by Chocolate? Death where is thy sting?

How you melt your chocolate is up to you, I personally prefer to put two pieces in my mouth and wait for it to dissolve ;)

hehe

Fill a sauce pan with maybe an inch of water( Just enough so that when you put your pyrex bowl in, the boiling water won't over flow)

When the water has boiled take off the heat (and turn off the flame... Don't burn down the house now!)

Place your Pyrex bowl inside the sauce pan

Chuck your chocolate into the pyrex bowl

Using a fork stir your chocolate until you have a gooey melted yummy mess

Resist urges to eat the chocolate, or lick the fork ;)

Step 5: Flavourings?

Now it's up to you now whether you want to make Rum truffles OR Orange truffles

For RUM truffles:

Put two hearty glogs of Rum into your Swiss Roll/Marzipan mix and give it a good stir. For non-alcoholic truffles you could always use Rum flavouring (which I would advise to put in with the molten chocolate)


For Orange:
To get a REALLY orangey taste I put almost half a bottle of Orange flavouring into my chocolate, BUT I would advise putting a little bit, tasting it, then if needed put in abit more untill you are satisfied. If you wanted to, instead of using Orange flavourings AND chocolate you could instead use a Terrys Chocolate Orange?  To make the truffles a little more naughty I put in a hearty glog of Tripple sec.. (you could always use Cointreau) into my Swiss roll/ Marzipan mix

Step 6: Lets Mix It Up Abit

Now it's time to put your molten Chocolate into your Swiss roll/ Marzipan (and booze?) mix. I gave it a good stir with a spatula, but alike my other Instructable I think it's best to get your hands in... so Glove up and give it a good old mix!

Now if your mix seems VERY wet... there is a few ways you can save it... try firstly to put your mix in the refrigerator for an hour or so and see if it firms up. If this doesn't work add some more Marzipan, or Swiss roll and see how it goes.

Step 7: Oh Balls!

Now it's time to roll your mix into mouth sized balls!... (ooo-errr matron!) I think no more than a diamiter of a £2 coin or 2p piece.

I then rolled the truffle into plates of yummy toppings, in one plate I had cocoa powder, one had chocolate vermicelli  and one had sugar crystals.  I made sure that they where equally coated then popped them into a Petit-four case.


Okay for the eagle eyed, you may notice that the picture is of my Christmas pudding treats, but my hands where to gooey to hold my camera, to take an action shot of the truffles.

Step 8: Sit Back, Wrap or Enjoy

Now is time to clean up/lick the bowl or just bung it all in the dish washer!

Like my Christmas pudding treats I find that a bit of cellophane and some decorative ribbon goes a long way.

Also I find just taking a plateful into work helps to get peoples Christmas spirits... just don't do what I did, and offer them to a service manager, only for them to tell you of the companies no-booze-on-site policy... After a few truffles no one seemed to care ;)