Me + Chocolate = Forever

There really is no time when chocolate is very far from my mind, but Valentine's Day is a wonderful excuse to indulge even more than usual. 

While I would generally refrain from keeping chocolate in my desk at work, I was in a festive mood and decided to pick some up during my usual grocery run last week. I headed to the "seasonal" aisle of my local grocery store, and was very confused when I found a lot of green, yellow and lavender marshmallow animals lined up on the shelves. Seriously, this was almost a week before Valentine's Day and all of the pink and red-wrapped candies had already been consolidated into a smaller section at the front of the store that until recently had been occupied with broken candy canes. 

As if the prominently displayed Easter candy wasn't enough, I also noticed some patio furniture stacked on top of the dairy cases in the back of the store. Considering the temperature has been in the single digits lately, I think the whole store is getting a little too far ahead of the calendar...

Purchasing pre-made chocolate wasn't enough for me this year, so last Friday I decided to try my hand at making some truffles. I went back to the store, where my basket ended up as the picture of health, with Nutter Butters, Oreos, two kinds of chocolate chips, agave syrup, peanut butter and some hazelnut spread (not actually for the truffles, but I had just finished a jar and it fit nicely with the teeth-rotting, flab-inducing theme of my basket).

I followed the "Peanutty" and "Indulgent Chocolate" variations of this No-Bake Truffle recipe with a decent amount of success, if I may say so myself. The crumb setting on my blender did a nice job reducing the cookies to dust, and after that everything else just gets dumped in a bowl and mixed together. 

I didn't have any trouble rolling the mixture into balls, but I did choose to give them a quick rest in the freezer before dipping them in melted chocolate. 

The dipping part was definitely a little messy, and the coatings were far from perfectly smooth. I topped the peanut butter ones with appropriately colored peanut butter M&Ms and stuck them back in the fridge to set.

I packed up a bunch of truffles to take to dinner at a friend's house on Saturday. They made for an indulgent after-dinner treat. At two (or three) bites a piece, these truffles are pretty rich even for this chocoholic. I don't do a very good job of savoring them as I am eating, and then regret it later when I have eaten too many all at once. This is all to say I should be sharing more of the leftovers, but they're so good I just want to hoard them for myself.