Sugar-Free Brownie Bites - Sugar Free September

If you're doing Sugar-Free September or even just cutting out/back on sugar generally you might be missing sweet treats. To follow Sugar-Free September really strictly, you wouldn't even be eating fruit because of the natural sugars. I haven't had a lot of fruit this month but I have had some as I think it's important to get your five-a-day - mainly through veg but the occasional piece of fruit is good as well.

But sometimes instead of fruit what you really want is chocolate. I've done really well so far but when we had a day out earlier this month and were taking a packed lunch, I knew my husband would want something sweet - I would normally bake something to take with us - and that I would want something as well. I ended up buying him something as a treat and made myself these sugar-free brownie bites from Nutritious Deliciousness.com.

I already had all the ingredients at home - walnuts from Lidl I had bought to add to salads, dates that I bought for another recipe that I never got around to making, coconut oil which I bought a little while ago after having read about its health benefits, and I had some raw cacao powder, which is less processed than cocoa powder and unsweetened.

In fact, I found the whole thing quite bitter and had to add a couple of spoonfuls of xylitol sweetener to make them palatable, and then they were really nice, especially after they had firmed up for a while in the fridge. I'd advise following the recipe and seeing if you can manage without sweetener, and if not adding a little to taste.

These are really easy to make - blitz the walnuts in a food processor, then add the dates, cacao and melted coconut oil and whizz again to form a dough. I'd advise tasting the mixture at this point to see if you want to add sweetener.

Turn the machine off and scrape out the dough onto a piece of greaseproof paper. The recipe advises using another piece of greaseproof paper to press down on the top and rolling them out to cut into squares, but my mixture was a bit too sticky and too thin when I rolled it out, so I gave up and hand-rolled them into balls.

This is when I tried them and decided they were bitter, so formed the balls back into a dough, added the sweetener and rolled them into balls again. I then rolled them in some more cacao to coat the outside.

Put them in the fridge for a while to firm up, and you can - almost - convince yourself you are eating chocolate truffles!

 

I'm sharing these with We Should Cocoa, hosted by Choclette at Tin and Thyme.

Chocolate Truffle Making with Farfetch

Photo courtesy of Farfetch

When a company called Farfetch invited me to a chocolate making evening I assumed they were a confectionery company, or perhaps one that ran different 'experience days' for hen nights and parties. So I was a bit surprised to find out that Farfetch is a luxury designer fashion retailer with an interesting USP - they bring together over 400 fashion boutiques from around the world onto one website, but rather than hold any stock, when you order your items are delivered directly from the boutique.

 

Fashionistas obviously do eat chocolate because they invited me and a group of other food bloggers and lifestyle bloggers to a chocolate truffle making lesson in their beautiful offices. I've made truffles several times before and even went to the Chocolate Hotel in Bournemouth for a chocolate weekend so I pretty much knew what I was doing but it was still a fun experience.

 

The lesson was taken by Lisa Marley of the Cocoa Box, who was a great tutor. She explained how chocolate is made and got us to taste different pieces before we sat down to the task of truffle making while drinking amazing chocolate martinis.



Photo courtesy of Farfetch

I was paired up with Vicky from Being Tilly's Mummy (which was funny as my cat - my own little baby - is called Tilly) and we decided to flavour our chocolate truffles with alcohol (I think it was brandy), the other option being mint which I don't like.

 

 

We added cream to chocolate that had already been melted and found that even after just a minute of stirring, the mixture had already become very thick and stiff. We spooned it into large piping bags - this is much easier to do in pairs - and piped it out into thick lines which made some people giggle!

We were advised to cut the lines into pieces and roll each piece between our fingertips to make a ball, rather than rolling in the palms of our hands as this would melt the chocolate. I found that I didn't need to roll it at all and instead could just shape it into a ball by pressing gently.

We made quite a lot of mess!

We decorated our truffles in different ways, dipping into melted chocolate, or rolling in cocoa powder, chocolate vermicelli or raspberry flavour sprinkles. The Cocoa Box provided us with a selection of bags and boxes to take our truffles home in, just in time for Easter!

I'm sharing these truffles with Alphabakes, the blog challenge I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter I have chosen this month is T.

Thanks to Farfetch for inviting me to the event

 

Haagen-Dazs Ice Cream Truffles

 

Chocolate truffles are something of a must in my house for Valentine's day, but I've made them a few times before and wanted to do something different this time. By a stroke of luck, I was sent some Haagen-Dazs vouchers to review their Strawberry Cheesecake flavour ice cream and I found some recipes on the US version of their website for 'gelato piccolinos' - piccolino just meaning little tiny thing. These are basically chocolate truffles filled with ice cream!

I didn't use oil as in their recipe as I just wanted a crisp coating for my truffles. I also switched up the flavours so I could use the strawberry cheesecake ice cream, which I thought would be better coated in white chocolate, and I also made some with their Belgian Chocolate ice cream, which I coated in milk chocolate and rolled in cocoa powder. The strawberry and white chocolate ones are decorated with little edible butterflies but these would also be great with pieces of freeze dried strawberries!

The ice cream needs to be soft enough to scoop but still pretty solid. I took some scoops from each tub and moulded them into balls, placing them on a piece of greaseproof paper on a small plate (I only wanted to make a few). I returned them to the freezer for an hour to firm up again - the strawberry cheesecake ice cream seemed softer than the chocolate and had started to melt almost straight away.

After an hour, I melted 50g of white chocolate and 50g milk chocolate in small bowls, took the ice cream balls out of the freezer and quickly dipped them in the chocolate, decorating them as I have described. Then they went back into the freezer to firm up again!

 

I'm sharing these with Treat Petite, the challenge created by Stuart at Cakeyboi and Kat the Baking Explorer, which is hosted this month by United Cakedom. The theme this month is Like It, Love It, Gotta Have it - which is how my fiancé feels about Haagen-Dazs!

 

 

 I'm also sending this to the Food Year Linkup, hosted by Charlotte's Lively Kitchen, as these would be lovely for Valentine's Day.

 

Chocolate Truffles without using double cream

I received some Christmas cake flavoured liquor from Marks & Spencer as an early Christmas present and wanted to think of a few things to do with it, apart from drink it of course! I thought it would make a nice flavouring for chocolate truffles but didn't have any double cream, which has always been a part of recipes for chocolate truffles I've made before. But you can make chocolate truffles without cream. I found a recipe online but can't remember where I found it now, even though it was only a few days ago!

They are pretty simple to make at any rate:
Melt 85g chocolate in the microwave and stir in 2 tsp of your chosen liqueur. Stir in the yolk of one egg, followed by 1 tbsp. butter and 1 tbsp. sifted icing sugar.

You will find the mixture stiffens pretty quickly. It can easily be shaped into truffles - I placed mine into mini sweet cases and put them in the fridge overnight. They don't set quite as solid as truffles made with cream, which is why I'd recommend putting them in little paper or foil cases, but they aren't too soft - the perfect consistency to eat in my opinion!

You can definitely taste the liquor - which is very nice by the way, I'm not sure I would have recognised it as Christmas cake flavour if it didn't say so on the bottle, but it is lovely! These are perfect for enjoying after dinner with a coffee, or at any time really! I wouldn't recommend packaging them up to give as an edible gift though as they are a little too soft for that and probably need to be kept in the fridge.

I'm sending these to Baking with Spirit, hosted by Janine at Cake of the Week; this month she is asking for recipes using a Christmassy alcohol, and you can't get more festive than Christmas cake liqueur!

I'm also sending this to Treat Petite, hosted by Kat aka The Baking Explorer and Stuart at Cakeyboi.

MyChocolate chocolate tasting and truffle making workshop

There are certainly some perks to being a food blogger, perhaps chief among which is being invited to events, workshops and demonstrations. I was invited to a chocolate tasting and truffle making class by MyChocolate in central London. MyChocolate offers all sorts of workshops for individuals, groups, hen parties, corporate entertainment and so on - including making and decorating a giant chocolate button, chocolate truffles, cocktail mixing, and chocolate fudge. Their main venue is in London, near Farringdon, where they have rooms of different sizes to cater for different groups. They also put on events at other venues like Vinopolis, and also have branches in Brighton and Manchester.

On this particular evening in February they had invited a group of food bloggers to sample chocolate, drink prosecco and make truffles. We were welcomed by our demonstrator Sophie, who explained that first we would be tasting chocolates with different cocoa contents and flavours. I don't think I have a particularly discerning palate as other people could detect notes of aniseed and caramel in the various chocolates, but it all tasted like chocolate to me! It was obvious however how much of a difference there was between each sample.

Then we began the messy process of making truffles. I'd done it once before at the Chocolate Boutique Hotel in Bournemouth - we used a similar technique here but dipped the truffles in melted chocolate, rather than rolled them around in our hands, so the table got quite messy!
Sophie told us the right quantity of cream to mix with the melted chocolate - we were using dark chocolate as it sets faster.

The mixture thickens very quickly and you can spoon it into a piping bag.

Pipe out small pieces of the chocolate ganache - either in a straight line or little ball. The shape doesn't make any difference at this stage as you will roll the chocolate into balls or other shapes if you are feeling more creative, like I was!

Simply roll the truffles into balls - you need to do this quite quickly though before the chocolate starts to melt!

We then dipped each truffle in melted chocolate, tapped them on the end of a fork to remove the excess, and placed them on the paper tablecloth to set.

I shaped a few of mine like hearts as it was just after Valentine's day. We had a choice of toppings to sprinkle on the truffles, including cocoa powder, chopped nuts, coconut and dried raspberry pieces.

We also half-dipped some large marshmallows; here you can see I dipped one in coconut and the other in white chocolate shavings. These tasted really good!

Here are a couple of truffles with chopped nuts - the table did get very messy!

The raspberry pieces went really well with the heart-shaped truffles, I thought.

We were each given a small gold box to package up our truffles in and take them home.

I had a very enjoyable evening and would not hesitate to recommend MyChocolate if you are looking for a chocolate-making workshop in London, or in Manchester or Brighton.

Thanks to MyChocolate for inviting me to the workshop.

Hotel Chocolat Valentine's Day Chocolate Heart

  

 The lovely people at Hotel Chocolat asked if I would like to review one of their range of Valentine's Day chocolates and gave me a few options. They have a fabulous range this year, including boxed chocolates, a goody bag, champagne and truffles sets, and a new range of toiletries including luxury bath oils if the woman in your life is on a diet! I couldn't resist this one, called Open Your Heart To Me.

It costs £26 and for that you get six chocolate truffles - two each of passion fruit truffle, caramel praline and strawberry and rose truffle. But best of all, the heart shaped box it comes in is made of chocolate, so you can eat that too!

It comes very attractively packaged in a pink gift box with a black ribbon. I was also impressed by the outer packaging; if you order this online it will surely survive the delivery process in perfect condition.

 I shared this with my boyfriend and his mum, as it arrived the day before she was coming over to dinner and I thought it would be good to get her opinion too. The truffles were exquisite - particularly the passion fruit in my opinion. My only complaint is that there was only six!

The chocolate shell is very thick - a good inch at the outer edges I would say, and thinner in the middle. It was a little like eating an Easter egg, where you have eaten the treats inside and then eat the shell of the egg (at least, I always do it that way around!) - but it was a much better quality chocolate than a cheap Easter egg. My boyfriend particularly liked being able to break off part of the shell and leave plenty until the next day. I think this is a lovely idea as it looks a bit different from your average box of chocolates, and would make a great Valentine's gift or treat to share with your loved ones - or to indulge in yourself!

Thanks to Hotel Chocolat, who sent me this product to review. All opinions are my own.

Slimming World Chocolate Truffles

Yes, it is possible to follow the Slimming World diet and still eat chocolate - even chocolate truffles!

Nothing is forbidden on Slimming World, but several foods have a "syn" number - similar to the Weightwatchers points system - and as long as you add up your syns, and try to stick within a certain number, you can eat pretty much whatever you want. Of course you can't eat that much chocolate... but it's up to you!

We had a food tasting at my Slimming World group last week and were asked to bring canapes or bite sized treats, as it was a celebration of the Woman of the Year competition. I found a recipe for chocolate truffles on the Slimming World website and thought they would be perfect for a celebration. I adapted the recipe as it asked for half-fat double cream, and I had half-fat sour cream in the fridge already opened, and decided to try out the recipe using this instead. They tasted really nice!

I also halved the quantities given and made ten truffles, which worked out at 3.5 syns each.

60ml half-fat sour cream

100g plain chocolate, finely chopped

1 tbsp liqueur of your choice - I used Chambord black raspberry liqueur, though an orange liqueur would also be nice

2 tbsp cocoa powder

Gently heat the cream in a pan and add the chocolate; stir until melted.

Add the liqueur

Stir until you have a glossy and thick chocolate mixture.

In the past I've had problems with putting chocolates into the fridge to set, where it has set rock hard onto the plate and I couldn't get it off! So I decided to line a small bowl with greaseproof paper which would be easy to peel off. I left it in the fridge overnight.

When you are ready to make the truffles, place the cocoa powder in a small bowl.

I didn't take any photos of this part as it was quite messy - but check out this post I wrote after attending a chocolate making class. Peel the greaseproof paper off the chocolate, and taking small pieces, roll between your hands into a ball. Then roll in the cocoa powder. I ended up with a lovely little bowl of chocolate truffles that tasted delicious.

 I'm sending this to We Should Cocoa, hosted by Elizabeth's Kitchen on behalf of Choclette from Chocolate Log Blog, as the challenge this month is to make chocolate truffles.