Mom I'm Hungry: Vegan Inspired Chocolate Truffles

Don't these truffles look good? They also taste delicious! They are my Vegan Inspired Chocolate Truffles recipe! This title is almost unappetizing right? But guess what, these truffles will melt in your mouth. And I'm not exaggerating when I say they are delicious.

Usually truffles are made with butter or heavy cream, which make them very rich and also heavier on your stomach. My Vegan inspired truffles are made with coconut oil, which makes them lighter and easy to digest. Coconut Oil is actually very good for you. I suggest you read about it on this post from Dr. Oz blog "The Surprising Health Benefits of Coconut Oil".

My truffles are the American style truffles, which are not as soft as the traditional French truffles but they are much easier to make. The traditional truffles have chocolate ganache in the center, solid chocolate around, and then the truffle is coated with powdered chocolate.

My recipe yields about 30 small truffles and each is just about 28 cal. They are also ver low in cholesterol. Sounds even better now, right?

Keep the truffles in an airtight container out of the refrigerator and they will be good for 5 days but I bet they will be gone by the end of the second day.

What You Need:

7 oz dark chocolate* (at least 70 % cocoa)
4 tablespoons coconut oil
2 ½ tablespoons water
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
Pinch of sea salt
1/4 cup cocoa powder or drinking chocolate mix, for rolling

Other toppings: finely chopped pistachios, hazelnuts, almonds or pecans, shredded coconut, etc.

What To Do:

Note: You will need a double boiler but if you don't have one use two pans, one smaller that can fit inside a bigger pan.

Put water to boil (either the bottom part of the double boiler or the larger of the two pans.

Chop chocolate into small pieces.

Place the chocolate, coconut oil, water, salt and vanilla extract in a small pan or top part of a double boiler.

Once the water boils reduce heat to the lowest setting.
Place the smaller pan into the big pan.

Stir the chocolate coconut mix until melted and blended.

Put mix in a 8-inch glass baking dish.
Notice how smooth it is.
Put in the refrigerator for 2 hours uncovered.

This will be enough time for the mix to harden but be still soft enough to be rolled into balls.

Use a regular spoon or a measuring spoon to make small balls. I use the 1/2 teaspoon measuring spoon to spoon the chocolate mix but the whole ball itself is more than just a 1/2 teaspoon.
I use a silicone spatula to help remove the ball from the measuring spoon.

Drop the ball in a bowl with cocoa powder or cocoa mix. Use a wooden spoon or your hands to cover the ball with the cocoa.

Carefully roll the truffle in your hands to make it rounder. It does not need to be perfectly round.
In the picture I made smaller and bigger truffles to compare. I prefer the smaller truffles.

You can also coat the truffles with coconut flakes.
Usually the flakes that come in bags are too big so I chop them to make them smaller. You can also use a food processor. I just didn't want to clean it after.