By Erin

Let’s start with the positive here.  Aren’t the Olympics great? Over the next few days, I’m sure many of you will be gathering with friends to cheer on Team USA.  If you’re looking to bring a something tasty to share,  I decorated these super tasty chocolate chip cookie dough truffles to be very USA-festive! And the best part? You eat them cold, so they’re also a good way to get a chocolaty fix while cooling down this hot summer.

If you’ve never had a cookie dough truffle, its essentially cookie dough… but… it doesn’t use eggs. So its cookie dough you don’t have to worry about eating. Genius, no?

 

I used a basic recipe for cookie dough truffles that I’ve seen on every food blog and recipe book out there.  Here it is:

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup light brown sugar
• 1 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
• 2 cups flour
• 1 stick butter, softened (1/2 cup)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• mini chocolate chips

1. Cream the butter and sugar together.
2. Slowly add the milk and flour to the mixer.
3. Then add in the vanilla.
4. Once mixed, remove from mixer and stir in the chocolate chips.
5. Let chill at least one hour.
6. Remove from fridge, and use a cookie scoop to form into balls. (I didn’t have one, I just did it by hand.)
7. Place on wax paper and return to fridge for an hour.

Rolling the dough:

And here’s my pregnant tummy and (now) enormous boobs (which really better go back to their much smaller size post-baby!!!!!!) for those of you who would like to see it.

Then, the chocolate coating:

• Melt a large bag of chocolate chips using a double boiler.  (Or, improvise. I place one pot on top of a pot of water.) Make sure you don’t boil the water – use a medium – medium-high temperature, so the chocolate melts slowly and doesn’t burn.  Remove from heat and roll each ball in the chocolate – it’s easiest if you use a fork to roll the ball and remove it from the chocolate.  This allows the excess chocolate to drip off.

• Place balls covered in chocolate on the wax paper and either decorate or place back in the fridge to harden.

I sprinkled some with King Arthur Sparkling White Sugar, for the “White” part of Red, White &  Blue.  Do this BEFORE the chocolate hardens – when its still wet – so the sugar sticks.

After the other truffles have cooled a bit, decorate with red and blue gel (or, anything you like). I used these Sparkle Gel’s from Wilton that I picked up at Michaels.  I had them in the cabinet and thought they’d be perfect. I just made little squiggles.  You could use colored sugar, decorating icing, or anything you like.

Then I put them all together and placed back in the fridge until ready to serve!

Now, I said before let’s start out with the positive, because this was not at all what I intended to do. I wanted to cover the truffles in white chocolate died to be the colors of the Olympic rings. But you know what? White chocolate is HARD to melt. Oh, and I totally spaced and tried to do it right over the stove – not in a double boiler. Here’s what happened.

Then I tried in the Microwave.

I went back to the store and bought more white chocolate. I melted the chips, but they didn’t get as soft as regular chocolate. I added in the food coloring and the chocolate almost immediately siezed, getting hard. I tried to coat a few balls, but it was difficult.

I got this far, and they were ugly. I also realized at this point that I hate white chocolate. The balls were getting soft since it was taking me so long. So I went to put the unfinished ones back in the fridge. ANNNNNNNNNNNNNNDDDDDDD…. I dropped almost the entire tray on the floor.

Seriously. I was left with this many that stayed on the tray when I caught it.  Sad:

So I moved on, and decided to then use regular chocolate and the red, white and blue decorations, as I showed you above. Which was, much, much, much easier than the white chocolate. And, they tasted delicious! The white chocolate ones were WAY too sweet for me.

I did cover the ones I’d already finished in regular chocolate, too, so they could add to my finished display.  But man, it was a sad day.  Moral of the story? Make these cookie dough balls, they’re tasty, but stick with regular chocolate for the coating!

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