Chocolate Covered Strawberry Truffles

Our first Valentine's day together, we decided to cook something special. Kerstin of Cake, Batter, and Bowl had just posted a yummy treat, and I had found some strawberries from the previous summer's farmer's market in my freezer.

So we had to try making chocolate-covered strawberry truffles.

We didn't quite follow Kerstin's instructions. In deference to Debbie's chocolate preference (which matches mine but for different reasons), we used dark chocolate chips instead of semisweet, and we skipped the white chocolate entirely. I like to test a recipe before going all out on presentation, so we skipped the food coloring as well.

The first time we made these, the truffles came out big enough to share, and absolutely scrumptious. It was hard, yet we managed to restrain our urge to eat them all at once, instead saving them in the freezer to enjoy one at a time, once every couple weeks. I hope we can restrain ourselves again!

Chocolate Covered Strawberry Truffles (Cake, Batter, and Bowl)

Ingredients

• 1 cup puréed strawberries (typically about 8-10)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups dark chocolate chips
• 1 tablespoon canola oil

Directions

1. Simmer strawberry puree, sugar, and butter in a small nonstick pan over medium low heat until reduced to 1/2 cup.


2. Mix reduction with flour and salt (I suggest adding the flour a bit at a time) in a small bowl; refrigerate until cold, at least one hour.



3. Form approximately 12 rolled round truffles on wax paper; chill until cold, about half an hour


4. Melt chocolate chips, careful not to burn the chocolate, either at half power for 30 seconds at a time, or full power for ten seconds at a time. Mix in oil.

5. Dip strawberry truffle filling in chocolate, cover evenly, and place on wax paper to cool

6. Once the chocolate has set, either drizzle with white chocolate per original recipe, or just pack them away. See how long they can last in your freezer!

He said

While the strawberry puree is reducing it smells so wonderful. The combination of berry and butter just brought whiffs of pancakes with strawberry syrup straight from my childhood. We first made these about two years ago now, and we had to make them again for photographs for this year's Valentine's day post. (What a shame!)

She said

These truffles are so wonderfully tasty. I love the flavor combination of strawberry and dark chocolate. If you have the time, I recommend doubling or tripling the recipe and sharing with a crowd. I think we'll need to make another batch this summer when farmer's market strawberries are at their sweet peak.

When we finished dipping today's strawberry batch in the melted chocolate, we had quite a bit of melted chocolate left over. Ooops! So we dipped slices of banana in the remaining chocolate. The freshly dipped samples we had were nice, and so were the chilled versions. I can imagine us experimenting with chocolate-covered banana truffles someday, and maybe testing with other fruits, too.