Chocolate Covered Walnut and Date Truffles

We had a lovely dinner out tonight with our good friend Phil. I always love having dinner with Phil because he is such warm and genuine person. For those of you that have friends from the mid-west I know you will understand what I mean when I say he is mid-west nice. Phil is just a genuine guy which common sense values. As always, it was a lovely dinner with lots of good conversation that we thoroughly enjoyed

After we dropped Phil at his hotel we came home and I decided to finish the little chocolate covered treat that I started making this afternoon. My husband loves anything with chocolate so this is something I made for him to have a little treat ever once in a while.

Since reading the abstract on the benefits of consuming polyphenols and polyunsaturated fats I immediately thought about making some healthier truffles. This time I used many of the same ingredients that I had in this recipe, but in a different way. Additionally I decided to cover the truffles in dark chocolate since the cocoa powder version was my husband’s favorite the last time.

These truffles came together fairly quickly. Some time was spent forming the balls and waiting for the time to freeze, but overall I don’t think this recipe had more than 15 minutes active time. Here is what I made.

Chocolate Covered Walnut and Date Truffles
Makes 24 truffles

Ingredients:

1 cup walnuts
½ cup oatmeal, dry
10 medjool dates
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon ginger, powdered
1 pinch salt
4 ounces dark chocolate

Directions:

Place the walnuts and oatmeal in your food processor and process until walnuts and oatmeal are ground. Add the dates, cinnamon, ginger and salt and process until the dates are completely ground.

Use a small disher (the 1 ½ tablespoon size) and form 12 balls from the nut and date mixture. Take each of the 12 balls and divide in half and roll into your hands to form a sphere.

Place the spheres in a half sheet pan lined with a silpat or parchment paper and freeze for at least an hour.

Melt the chocolate in the microwave until soft.

Remove the nut and date balls from the freezer. Using two skewers roll the nut and date balls, one at a time, in the melted chocolate. You want to completely coat the balls in chocolate and then return the to the cold sheet pan. Continue to coat the balls until all are coated. Return the covered balls to the freezer to solidify.

Once the chocolate covered walnut and date truffles are hard they can be removed from the freezer, wrapped individually in plastic cling film and stored in a zip top bag in the freezer.

Nutritional Information:

Amount Per Serving
Calories - 88.16
Calories From Fat (44%) - 38.41

Total Fat - 4.66g
Saturated Fat - 1.15g
Cholesterol - 0mg
Sodium - 0.79mg
Potassium - 98.92mg
Total Carbohydrates - 12.5g
Fiber - 1.54g
Sugar - 6.79g
Protein - 1.32g

Comment:

The taste is good with a nice cinnamon flavor coming through. I like the snap of the chocolate on the exterior. The only problem for me is the interior texture. With standard truffles you expect the interior to be soft and gooey and this came out a little crumbly. I had considered adding a little coconut oil to the filling but didn’t want to add the extra fat. Next time I make these I will turn the walnuts into walnut butter and fold the ground oatmeal (from the Vitamix) into the walnut butter and see if this improves the texture.

Overall, I think this was a worthy experiment and one that I am going to play around with to adjust the texture. For now these truffles are in our freezer waiting for someone to need a little sweet treat after dinner.