Recipe: Chocolate peanut butter truffles

Recipe: Chocolate peanut butter truffles
Source: The more than occasional baker 

I didn’t have much time to bake this Christmas and, since my sister was providing two desserts for our family get-together, I decided to finally try these basic chocolate peanut butter truffles from The more than occasional baker's blog. Whilst I made ‘normal’ truffles (with cream!) as a kid and, more recently, Oreo truffles, this variety was brand new and exciting territory for me.

This is probably the simplest recipe I’ve ever made in my life – it was actually dangerously easy when it comes to the waistline! (I did cheat by melting my chocolate in the microwave but I never think of that being a problem as long as you’re careful.)

I’d bought the three basic ingredients I needed for this recipe prior to Christmas but, when Santa brought me a jar of Sun-Pat Smooth, I decided to try this instead despite it being a peanut spread (made with 95% peanuts) rather than a peanut butter. It contained no butter at all but I hoped this wouldn’t be a problem for the texture.

I also cheated slightly by using what was technically a cheap ‘soft cheese’ rather than a cream cheese but, again, I hoped to get away with it!

The basic mixture smelt amazing and, since I made it on a diet day, I gave the spoons to a couple of relatives to lick. These were promptly treated as lollipops and I was asked what I was making with the ‘heavenly mixture’ – must have tasted good, then! Improvising slightly, due to our well-stocked fridge, I left the bowl in the garage overnight to chill.

Forming the truffle balls was the hardest part of the process since, having rolled the first one, my hands became slippery which made it slightly difficult to continue spooning the mixture, but it still wasn’t difficult. To be honest, I found it harder not to sneak any of the mixture into my mouth during the process!

Although they weren’t all the same size, I managed to make 37 truffles from my mixture, and this didn’t seem bad at all. I hadn’t bothered buying any sprinkles just for this recipe, so I used up the tiny bit of cocoa powder I had left (it actually went a long way!), and coated the rest of my truffles in icing sugar. The former provided a more grown-up and bitter taste whilst the latter gave a slightly sweeter experience. The only downside from the icing sugar-coated sweets was that, after an hour or so, they looked moist and shiny in appearance. However, this didn’t affect their taste.

Away from the coatings, I thought the truffles tasted great. They were rich and chocolatey and, whilst it wasn’t as strong as I’d hoped, the peanut butter taste was there. In fact, my Dad, who doesn’t like peanut butter (I know, shocking!), found this flavour was too prominent for his liking. I, however, thought the tanginess from the cheese was slightly more noticeable in the taste test. This was surprisingly pleasant and, when people were guessing the ingredients, it was commonly mistaken for orange juice. Nobody outright disliked this element but my brother did comment that it reminded him of Kraft Philadelphia: Cadbury which is a product he found a bit strange (he doesn’t like sweet and savoury together at the best of times!). I have to confess that I haven’t even tried chocolate Philadelphia because I can’t quite get my head around it but, if it is similar to these truffles, I’m going to have to give it a go!

Texturally, the truffles were fantastically soft, and I was pleased that my easy option choices in terms of ingredients hadn’t had a negative impact on the finished product.

On the whole, these chocolate peanut butter truffles were a big hit and they all got eaten. Now I just need to pretend that they’re really difficult to make so I don’t end up with a batch every week! 

Ease of recipe: 10/10
Finished product: 8/10
Overall score: 9/10
Make again? Yes