Chocolate Truffles

Home made chocolate truffles are fun to make and I just love getting into a chocolaty mess. I'm not sure how it's possible to make truffles without getting sieved cocoa powder and icing sugar everywhere, most things in my kitchen were coated with a fine dusting of both, including me.

I find the best way to deal with edible gold lustre spray is to place the rolled truffles onto cling wrap and carefully spray directly onto the truffle,  also spray the clingwrap surrounding the truffle.  Take the cling wrap and wrap around the truffle and roll the truffle back and forth until totally coated - this also prevents lustre spray coating all of your kitchen gold, which is fine for Christmas, but not such a bright idea when the New Year arrives.

Despite the mess they are well worth making, they can be flavoured to your own taste with Baileys, Cointreau, Brandy to name a few ideas. The chocolate truffles can be rolled in a variety of coatings - I coated mine with icing sugar, cocoa powder and sprayed some of the truffles with edible gold lustre - they can be coated with toasted desiccated coconut, chopped pistachios or dipped into melted chocolate. After you have made them place into gold petit fours cases. They will make a lovely Christmas gift too.

Keep in the fridge or they can be frozen.  They taste fabulous chilled......

The recipe is from the BBC GoodFood website.

Baked Camembert

I was given this Cheese Baking Crock from Sainsbury's by my son-in-laws Mum. I am very lucky because she has a very good eye for foodie gifts that I will be able to use on my blog. She knows my blog well because she has been following me for well over five years now.

All you have to do is place your Camembert into the crock pot, I would take the Camembert out of the fridge about an hour before you want to cook it or it will take longer to cook, top with two tablespoons of the caramelised onion chutney, replace the lid - such a brilliant idea and not one I have come across before.

Cook for 10-15 minutes on 200°C until wobbly and some of the oozing cheese is trying to break through. The recipe for this is on the side of the box the cheese baking crock came in.

Serving suggestions are sliced french bread and apple, waxy new baby potatoes and tiny cherry tomatoes on the vine - very, very delicious.

Thank you Lindsay!