Crazed Chocolate Insanity Part 1

So, for the festive season, I decided to trawl the internets for recipes, and make some vegan chocolate goodies as gifts. This led to my spinning around on a sugar and caffeine high for about two weeks, but I'm feeling better now *twitch*

None of these are my original recipes, though I did adapt a couple. I had a great time making the chocolates, and it was lovely that everyone enjoyed them as thoroughly as they appeared to!! My acknowledgement must, of course, go out to all of those fabby vegan folks wot came up with these recipes in the first place!

Okay, here we goes!! Starting with my favourite, Chocolate Truffles (*drools*) The original recipe came from vegweb, submitted by katkarma.

Chocolate Truffles

Ingredients

2 tubs Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese (this is my favoured faux cream cheese, but there are others - by Soy King, I think)
2 cups Lindt 70% cocoa chocolate, broken up (I love this chocolate, it's so smooth and it's readily available in supermarkets. But again, any vegan chocolate is good!)
3 cups confectioner's/powdered/icing sugar
Optional dipping ingredients - melted chocolate, cocoa, chopped nuts, etc
Optional flavouring - hazelnut/coffee/chocolate liquer

Method

You need a good food processor for this, as the mixture gets very thick.

Process the Better Than Cream Cheese until smooth, and slowly add the 3 cups of confectioner's sugar. Melt the chocolate - I like to use a metal bowl over a saucepan of boiling water. This ensures that the chocolate won't burn.

Pour the chocolate into the food processor with the cream cheese/sugar mix, and blend until smooth and thoroughly combined. At this point you could divide the mix and then add flavouring to the batches. I think it tastes just dandy as is, though!

Spread the mixture about an inch thick onto a plate, cover and cool until fairly solid.

Use either two teaspoons or your hands to mould the mixture into balls - you could put whole hazelnuts in the centre for added oomph.

I dusted mine with cocoa, but you can also carefully coat them in melted chocolate for a really intense flavour experience!! Or roll them in chopped nuts, or simply serve as is.

These must be kept chilled.