Valentine's Day Truffles

"Roses are red, some socks are black, won't you be my daddy mack?" - Family Matters

Happy Valentine's Day! <3

Valentine's day is not something I usually celebrate, but this year my love and I have decided to do something a little special together. Part of the reason for this is our two year anniversary was a couple of weeks ago and we neglected to do anything special for that, so we decided to combine it with Valentine's Day.

I am currently under a tight budget, and I don't really have the resources to buy a ton of gifts or go out to fancy dinners. So instead, I decided to make some pistachio chocolate truffles and put them inside a pretty box and give them to my sweetheart as a gift along with a cute card. I am also making him dinner, but dinner will be Friday (the day after Valentine's Day) since it works better with our schedule.

I was going to recycle a small pink box from Georgetown Cupcakes for my truffles. Some of you may recognize the name from the TV show called DC Cupcakes. We recently went there as a treat since there was no line outside (there is usually an extremely long line that goes as far back as 5-6 blocks). We got two yummy chocolate cupcakes (a strawberry lava fudge and a chocolate ganache) to go from there, and the box is the perfect size for my truffles. But when I went to World Market (Cost Plus), I found a really pretty chinese take out box for $.99 cents, and I liked it much better than the cupcake box. I used some left over ribbon to decorate it with and recycled some sparkly red tissue paper from some Christmas gifts I got this year to wrap the truffles in.

Here are some pictures from Georgetown Cupcakes

Aren't they pretty? They were pretty yummy, that's for sure.

But enough about cupcakes, here's the quick and easy recipe I used for the pistachio truffles courtesy of  Clodagh McKenna.

Ingredients

• 7oz good quality dark chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa) broken into pieces
• 1/3 cup + 2 tablespoons of heavy cream
• 1 1/4 cup of pistachio nuts, finely chopped

Directions

• Slowly melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl suspended over a saucepan full of simmering water until it is smooth and glossy
• Gently heat the cream in a heavy bottomed sauce pan until warm
• Pour the warm cream onto the melted chocolate and mix well until fully incorporated
• Mix in two-thirds of the pistachio nuts. Set aside to cool and firm (you can pop them in the fridge)
• Once firm, take teaspoons of the mixture and roll into walnut-sized balls, then leave to set on a tray lined with parchment paper
• Once set place the remaining finely chopped pistachio nuts in a bowl and roll the truffles in the nuts. (I bought a bag of pistachios and put them thru a food processor to chop them up)
• You can also zest a lemon or orange and roll the truffles in the zest for added color and flavor!

How fancy looking are they!? I taste tested one of these suckers... maybe two.. or three.. and they are really yummy. Make sure you buy higher quality chocolate than you usually do. It really makes a huge difference. I bought all of my ingredients for this at Trader Joe's and this recipe makes about 14 truffles. Not bad, huh!

xo