These truffle recipes come to us from Sophie (a.k.a. Fabulous Sophie (because she is)), our marketing guru Sydney-side. When I first started at Fisher & Paykel, Sophie was based down here in Dunedin, and she always brought a little ray of sunshine (and glamour) into the office. I have fond memories of these truffles made into the most spectacular Christmas tree configuration (completely doused in glitter!) for my first Fisher & Paykel Christmas. This time around, and without Sophie on site to persuade us to do something more adventurous, we went for a more sophisticated look, piling them up with cherries and sprinkling with grated chocolate to make a beautiful addition to any Christmas table.
Truffles also make great gifts; the Ginger truffles would be the easiest as they won’t melt at room temperature, unlike the Baileys chocolate truffles, which will start to melt as they come up to room temperature – even more reason to wolf them down quickly!
The best tip Sophie has included is to powder your hands with icing sugar when rolling the truffles. It really does help stop them sticking to your hands.
– Lauren.
Anyway, over to Soph:
“Christmas is without doubt my favourite time of the year. Gaudy decorations covering everything from homes to stores and entire streets, giving the perfect gifts (and of course receiving them!), parties with friends and with colleagues, and of course the anticipation of summer holidays all add a certain spark to December. Food plays a large part in my family, and at this time of year things go into overdrive. I definitely feel less guilty going into the silly season with a couple of extra gym sessions up my sleeve! While the traditional turkey and ham feast is always delicious, in my opinion there is nothing like Christmas baking. I know fruit mince tends to divide people, and the abundance of Christmas mince pies, Christmas pudding and Christmas cake around can often be greeted with disdain, but I think there is nothing quite like having a pantry full of all these goodies and free rein to indulge in it all. Truffles, however, seem to create no such rift and I have never found them to be anything other than universally well received. I think they are a perfect bite-sized morsel of sweetness, just the thing to take the edge off when those sugar cravings strike after Christmas dinner. My word of caution to anybody endeavouring to make either of these recipes is best of luck refraining from eating a good quantity of the mixture and/or ingredients while you are making them!”