Chocolate Dipped Oreo Truffles

My oldest loves a feast!  She loves getting the whole family together and eating delicious food that you pretty much only eat once a year.  She loves meat too.  Corned Beef is right up her alley...unless she finds the brining strange.  I guess we'll find out.

My sister and I host the St Patty's Day Feast and invite our parents over to partake in the festivities.  We split up the duties.  The last two years it has been her job to make the corned beef and the accompaning veg: cabbage, potatoes and carrots.  I am not a fan of corned beef.  It kind of makes me want to gag a little bit.  So I am happy to turn over this job to her.  My dearest husband though LOVES it, so I guess once a year I can stomach it...as long as my sister cooks it. It is my job to do everything else! 

I was going to turn dessert over to her but then she informed me that she was just going to buy something at the store.  GROSS!!  What can you get at the store that's very tasty?  I would much rather have something home-made.  So I am doing dessert, colcannan (this crazy Irish dish with mashed potatoes, loads of butter, cabbage and ham) and Irish Soda bread courtesy of Ina.  Very tasty! 

truffles before chocolate coating

Dessert is going to be oreo truffles.  If you haven't heard of these, it's pretty simple.  I got this off of Bakerella's web-site.  Take 20 mint oreos and (you're suppoed to have 12, but my package only came with 10 more) cookie part with the cream filling taken out.  Make into crumbs in food processor.  Stir in one package softened cream cheese.  Form into balls.  Refrigerate til firm.  Dip in chocolate.

I am using Callebaut dark chocolate to dip the truffles in...and something tells me the chocolate quality is going to far surpass the oreo truffle quality.  Nothing against oreos, but, come one.  Delicious, dark callebaut should probably be paired with something a little fancier.  I am all about the fancy you know.  But we will see.  I am hoping to turn them into little pots of gold.  I bought some gold chocolate rocks to top them with.

Results:
I think they are a success.  You have to use your imagination a little bit to see the pots of gold.   I feel they are a little odd texturally, and very very rich.  The minty taste is nice.  And the fine-quality chocolate is an excellent dipper.  If I were to do them over again I would definitely freeze vs. refrigerate the un-coated balls before hand as swirling them in the melted chocolate caused them to fall apart slightly and I couldn't mold them into a very good pot shape.  Both girls were licking every little crumb off their plates.

Chocolate Tips (disclaimer: I am not a chocolatier, so there you have it)
1. Don't get water anywhere near your chocolate!  It will cause it to seize up and be a complete disaster
2. Chop your chocolate into small pieces and when melting, melt on a very low heat
3. Try not to melt it completely, when it looks mostly melted, remove from heat and start stirring and let the residual heat finish melting the last few lumps
4. Add a pile of unmelted chocolate into the melted chocolate and stir like crazy to get the unmelted pieces to melt using whatever heat is left.  This helps bring the temperature cool enough to dip in.
5. If the chocolate in your pan gets too cool.  Briefly put back on burner until it starts to melt again.  Stir stir stir. You don't want it to get too warm.
6.  The chocolate needs to be cool to the touch before you dip anything in it.  No warmth whatsoever!

Here's the thing about tempering, you see, you want your chocolate to solidify after you've dipped whatever it is you're dipping in the chocolate.  If you do not temper it correctly, it will never harden.  So then you're left with a gooey chocolatey mess instead of a nice hard chocolate shell. 

Here's my final word on chocolate dipped oreo truffles...