Amazing vegan chocolate truffle recipe

Credit: iStock / JoanVicent

Your mouth will water just reading this recipe for amazing vegan chocolate truffles…

For our recent Secret-Santa gift exchange at the office, I decided to make vegan chocolate truffles. Two reasons: these are incredibly easy to make—especially when trying to adapt cooking for non-vegans using the ingredients of a vegan kitchen—and, two, handmade chocolates, are you kidding? Um, yummm! Just thinking about these makes me giddy with indulgence…

From what I can gather, most vegan chocolate truffle recipes involve cashew cream (and, yes, this stuff is as intense as it sounds) and all require the chocolate-cashew cream mixture be refrigerated for a couple hours before forming into balls—so don’t follow my lead and think you can just whip these babies up and have them right away… With that in mind, my only modification to the following recipe is to add a dash of patience—because it will be hard not to eat the bowl of unformed truffles before they’ve even hit the fridge. Enjoy!
 

Vegan Truffles

Makes: 40 truffles
Prep time: 10 minutes, plus 2 hours for cooling

Ingredients:

3/4 c raw cashews
3/4 c cold water
2 c vegan semi-sweet organic chocolate chips (Editor’s note: for really special truffles, try using a high-quality fair-trade chocolate bar instead)
2 tbsp vegetable oil
chopped nuts (almond/walnuts/cashews)
cocoa powder
(Editor’s note: some recipes call for a pinch of fine-grain salt)

Directions:
Purée the cashews and water for 1–2 minutes until they make a heavy cream consistency.

Using a double boiler (or a small metal bowl carefully placed inside a saucepan of boiling water), heat the oil and melt the chocolate over medium heat until smooth. Don’t let it bubble. Turn the heat down until the chocolate is cool enough to work with; fold in the cashew cream.

Pour mixture into a fridge-friendly container and let chill until it’s easy to work with (about 2 hours).

Form into balls (a friend recommends putting a rough ball in plastic wrap and rolling it around in your hands until it is a perfect little orb) and roll in whatever garnish/topping you prefer. Granville recommendations for toppings include: cocoa powder, chopped cashews, toasted coconut and spices (e.g. cardamom, cinnamon, cayenne, ginger, all spice, nutmeg).

Refrigerate for up to two weeks.

Adapted from Vegweb.com, which offers a list of vegan versions of ingredients used for cooking, including sugar.

Find creative variations of this vegan chocolate truffles recipe, plus a link to a how-to youtube video, at the Enlightened Cooking blog.

Enjoy! And let us know how your truffles worked out. I’m always looking for tricks to make these even more amazing. Use the comment form below.