12 Days of Christmas: Day 6

I've only had Oreo Truffles one time before - it was a few years ago at work. A fellow graduate student brought in some Halloween-themed ones (decorated like eye balls!). They were incredible! I immediately started brainstorming the possibilities for decorating them - pink and red for Valentine's Day, red/white/blue for the 4th of July/Memorial/Labor Day, and of course red/green for the holidays. For some reason, I've never gotten around to making them. My group of girl friends had our annual holiday party this past weekend, and I decided it was finally time!

Instead of using semi-sweet chocolate as the recipe calls for, I decided to use Wilton Candy Melts (you can find them at Michael's). You also can just use white chocolate and dye it with red and green food coloring gel (and actually I did end up adding some green to the green melts because they weren't quite "green" enough!) One thing about the candy melts - once the truffles were in the fridge, they turned a little white (see the pics). This went away when the truffles were out at the party (reaching close to room temp). I had that problem last year when I used red/green swirl morsels to coat peppermint sticks . . .

These were a big hit at the party! Although I love the festivity of the red and green candy melts, taste-wise I would have preferred the semi-sweet chocolate, so perhaps next time I will use the red/green as the drizzle instead :)

Oreo Truffles

Ingredients:

1 package Oreo cookies, finely crushed, divided

1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened

2 packages (8 squares each) Baker's semi-sweet baking chocolate, melted OR the equivalent of the chocolate of your choice (I used 1/2 package of red Wilton Candy Melts and 1/2 package of green Wilton Candy Melts)

white chocolate for drizzling, optional (I used about 1/2 cup of Nestle white chocolate chips)

Directions:

1. Reserve 1-2 Tablespoons Oreo crumbs and mix the rest with the cream cheese until well blended.

2. Shape the mixture into 42 1-inch balls. (I NEVER have as many as the recipe states with cookies for example, but for this I ended up with exactly 42!)

3. Dip the shaped balls in melted chocolate; place on a waxed-paper covered baking sheet. I added some green food coloring gel to the melted green "melts" and then added some vegetable shortening (as the package suggests) to achieve a "dip"able consistency.

NOTE: After the fact, I visited the Kraft website to see if they had any tips on how to prevent the chocolate from pooling at the bottom of the truffle - they have a great tip: add the balls to the bowl of chocolate and roll them around with forks. Remove the truffles with forks and allow excess chocolate to drip back into the bowl before placing truffle on prepared baking sheet.

4. Sprinkle with remaining cookie crumbs or drizzle with white chocolate. For the drizzle, I melted white chocolate carefully in the microwave, transfered it to a resealable sandwich bag, and snipped off the corner. You of course use a pastry bag, a parchment cone, or whatever works for you.

5. Refrigerate 1 hour or until firm. Store in a tightly covered container in the refrigerator.

Source: Adapted from Good Eats 'n Sweet Treats, originally from Kraft