Chocolate Truffles

A work friend of mine has asked me to make truffles for aaaages and I went to see her the other day so it was about time! She loved them, me not so much... Im not a huge fan of dark chocolate, so next time I will use some milk chocolate - just how I made my chocolate fudge, 1/3rd milk to 2/3rds dark.
These truffles were sticky, messy and not the easiest things to make but they came out all right in the end!

The recipe came from Eric Lanlard's Chocolat and makes around 30. Keep the truffles in the fridge for up to a week.

Ingredients

250g Dark Chocolate
2 Tbsp Milk
1 Tbsp Espresso Coffee
100g Unsalted Butter
2 Egg Yolks
25g Cocoa Powder

1. Gently melt the chocolate and milk together in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water, making sure the surface of the water does not touch the bowl.                          
2. Remove from the heat and stir in the coffee, butter and egg yolks until combined. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and leave to set in the fridge for 4 hours.                                                            
3. Place the cocoa powder on a plate. Using a dessert spoon, scoop out spoonfuls of the chocolate mixture. Coast your hands in cocoa to prevent the mixture from sticking and roll the chocolate mixture between the palms of your hands to form walnut-sized balls.                                            
4. Using a fork, roll the truffles in the cocoa powder to coat.

I REALLY don't like coffee, so funnily enough, I left that ingredient out.
The stage I had issues with was rolling the chocolate mixture into balls. I found it really hard to get the right kind of temperature for the chocolate. Once the chocolate mix in the bowl was taken out the fridge, I had to let it warm up otherwise I couldn't physically scrape out chocolate with the desert spoon. However, it needed to be cold when rolling in the palms of your hands. By the end, my hands were coated in chocolate!! I can safely say, I certainly did not master the technique!

After all the fuss, it was worth it in the end as my friend enjoyed them with a nice cuppa!