Chocolate Fondue & Truffle Inspired Treats

Things to look for in this post:
Chocolate fondue
Peanut Butter Bites - Truffitized*
Frozen Banana Bites - Truffitized*

(*Truffitized. I made this term up. They aren't exactly like your ordinary chocolate truffles, but they're definitely truffle-inspired. Someday I want to make truffles, but since I can't afford to make pure-chocolate delicacies at the moment I thought this would be a nice compromise/simpler test-run.)

This past weekend I hosted a chocolate fondue party, and it was a nice success:

Our partially eaten fondue. And yes, that is a RICE COOKER in the middle. Rice cooker fondue. I used this to keep the fondue warm--gotta be creative when you don't have a fondue pot!

























Mmmmm... melty chocolate!



Chocolate Fondue recipe, adapted from http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Chocolate-Bar-Fondue/Detail.aspx

• 32 ounces milk chocolate, grated
• 1 1/4 cups heavy cream
• 1 tablespoon instant coffee powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon white sugar
• 1/3 cup hot water

The fondue I made VERY roughly follows the recipe. I did not put coffee powder in it, and I made "estimates" of how much heavy cream/water/white sugar/vanilla extract to use. For chocolate, I used one 11.5oz bag of 60% cacao and one 11.5oz milk Ghiradelli chocolate chips, but I ended up having to add another 12oz bag of Nestle semi-sweet chocolate chip morsels. Basically, I eyed in ingredients until the chocolate looked smooth and silky and tasted yummy :)

My coworker's wife has been bringing in truffles that she is thinking of starting a business with; from this and from extra food sitting around, I was inspired to make truffle-like treats.



Peanut Butter Bites
I had a Reese's peanut butter cup last week that reminded me of how great they tasted... so I decided to try to make use of the 2 jars of peanut butter I had laying around to make something peanut-buttery to dip into the fondue. The peanut butter I bought was some crummy no-name organic brand from Costco that was extremely runny for peanut butter; I ended up looking up a recipe in order to make it more firm for me to be able to roll it into tiny balls:
http://www.recipezaar.com/Peanut-Butter-Balls-21812

• 1 cup sifted powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
• 3 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened

The result of the recipe: tastes SO much like the inside of Reese's peanut butter cups!

These little bites weren't the biggest hit of the party, so I decided to make use of the leftovers and turn them into candies.

Since my peanut butter was more runny I had to keep them frozen until right before I chocolate-dipped them. Also, unfortunately, once you add liquids to your fondue, it's hard to keep the chocolate solidified as chocolate candy. Under normal circumstances I believe the chocolate would easily harden around the peanut butter, but this wasn't the case. To fix this, I decided to roll the chocolate-covered peanut butter bites in powdered sugar and immediately stuck them in the freezer. The entire process is a little more complicated given the constantly-melting chocolate/peanut butter; I had to use saran wrap and an egg carton to help me with the spherical shape. Check out some pictures from the process:

































































Serves well directly out of the freezer. Yum!



Frozen Banana Bites

Left over bananas? ...CHOCOLATE COVERED BANANAS! It was none other than Disneyland, of course, that motivated me to put chocolate and bananas together. I also had some nutella left that I thought would go great with the bananas. I mixed the nutella into the chocolate, in approximately a 3:1 chocolate to nutella ratio.

I broke the banana into approximately 3/4 inch pieces and shaped them into small balls. I then froze them for a few hours and used the same process as the Peanut Butter Bites to cover them in chocolate. Bananas and chocolate don't mix/stick together too well, so I left the chocolate-covered banana balls in the egg carton overnight. The next day I pulled them out and rolled them in chopped nuts. Here's the finished product:




































Another delicious frozen treat!


P.S. If you notice some of the pictures I'm able to get more close-up detail on now... it's because I recently found the "digital macro" function on my camera. Hopefully one day I will out-use my camera so I can think about investing in a dSLR. :)