Amaretto Truffles

“For almond fans, a sweet and boozy truffle with strong flavour and firm texture.”

Amaretto Truffles

“For almond fans, a sweet and boozy truffle with strong flavour and firm texture.”

Ingredients

  • 300g milk chocolate, tempered
  • 100g organic oats
  • 50g almonds, roughly chopped
  • 225g ground almonds
  • 125g white caster sugar
  • 125g golden icing sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tsp lemon juice
  • 1 tsp sherry
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla paste

Makes approx. 80 truffles.

Amaretto Truffles

Inspiration

Marizpan fan

Probably every time I’ve had cake with marzipan on it, or in it, I’ve had it for the marzipan. This is because I’m something of a nut nut, so the involvement of almonds in the texture probably goes a long way to explain quite why I like marzipan so much. If I’ve been around the kitchen when some unfortunate soul has been making a cake involving the marzipan, now and again, there’s enough left to put on the cake.

Almond dilema

Now a word on making the marzipan. The popular way is to used blanched almonds it seems. Now that’s fine of course, but I have used normal almonds as well. The result is a much darker marzipan, but I honestly couldn’t tell the difference in the taste. If the colour of the filling of these is important to you, then you may want to consider this. Blanched almonds are sometimes a little more expensive, just bear that in mind.

So anyway, how best to combine with chocolate?

Chocolate choice

I’d made marzipan before, and simply coated it in dark chocolate. This alone is a good combination. Marzipan is really sweet, so adding more sugar is probably a bad idea, hence the dark chocolate rather than milk or white.

Something different

Thing is, what to do to jazz the recipe up and make something more unique? Perhaps combining it with alcohol somehow would add something to the flavour, as well as helping to preserve the shelf life? On that topic, I’m yet to find any conclusive evidence that the addition of alcohol will actually do this by the way. If anyone has wisdom on this, then please let me know.

Open a bottle

Looking for alcohol to change the flavour lead me straight to Amaretto. Speaking personally, it’s a bit much when just drunk on it’s own, but when added to the marzipan, your get a depth of flavour that lasts longer in the mouth when you eat it. Still, it’s very sweet, so a coating in dark chocolate is very much the right choice for balance here.

As ever, I struggle to resist adding something crunchy for texture. To that end, Amaretto biscuits, when crushed, make an ideal coating. The bonus is that there will probably be one or two left. Have yourself a coffee with one when you’re done. You deserve it.

Instructions

  1. Put the nuts and sugars into a bowl, and stir them to combine them all thoroughly.
  2. Put all other ingredients into another bowl, and whisk them together.
  3. Add the nuts and sugars to the wet ingredients and stir well.
  4. Add the Amaretto now, gradually, stirring to combine it each time.
  5. Knead and pound the mixture with your hands to release some of the oil from the almonds, until all is thoroughly mixed and smooth.
  6. Form a ball or lump of solid marzipan and put in the fridge for a few hours, ideally overnight. This will help the marzipan to dry out a little and will make it easier to dip and work with.
  7. Roll the marzipan out straight from the fridge. You can then cut it into roughly chocolate sized lumps, ready for dipping.
  8. Roll each little lump to make a truffle shape.
  9. Dip each into the milk chocolate, and just as it is setting, roll in the oats and chopped almonds.
  10. Allow to set fully before serving.

Next Time

Amaretto is really a very sweet drink, added to something that is already sweet. Perhaps there’s an alcohol to use that works well with marzipan but isn’t so sweet?