Chocolate Hazelnut Cake Truffles

To celebrate my blog's third birthday and to give to CT as a Valentine's gift, what could be more appropriate than chocolate truffles? The excellent hazelnut sherry cake was so large that it lasted us the whole week. By day eight, I had one slice left and it was starting to look a little dry - just right to be turned into cake truffles. As it happened, I received my chocolate competition win in time for the big day, so featured that instead of the truffles.

As I didn't take note of quantities and can no longer remember exactly, this is an approximation of what I did:

• Creamed 1/2 oz unsalted butter with 1oz icing sugar until light and fluffy.
• Added a glug of hazelnut oil and creamed some more.
• Blitzed the cake leftovers in the coffee grinder - I did this rather than crumble the cake because of the large pieces of hazelnut contained in the cake.
• Beat the crumbs into the creamed mixture until well incorporated.
• Added a sloosh of hazelnut syrup (I expect frangelico would have been good, but I don't have any of that) and mixed some more.
• Placed teaspoonfuls of the mixture into 13 round chocolate moulds and pressed in firmly - could have just rolled between hands to form balls, but I wanted something a bit more uniform for a change.
• Left to cool for half an hour - there was no need to put these in the fridge as my kitchen was virtually freezing at the time.
• Melted 100g G&B cooks 72% dark chocolate in a pan over hot water.
• Removed the cake balls from the mould and dipped them into the chocolate.
• Placed suitably chosen love hearts on the top and left to set.

CT was delighted to receive this bounty. Here's what he said in between mouthfuls. "From the ridiculous to the sublime with the fizzy love heart, which is frankly a pink stained toothed kiddy sweet to a truly delicious, sophisticated, nutty, delectable truffle. Two ends of the spectrum of sweets, represented - from utterly artificial to something hand crafted and made with care and love. It's artisan chocolate, but fun!

The truffles had good chocolate shells which had just the right crispness about them, cracking in a satisfying way to release the treasure within. They had a heady hazelnut flavour with a smooth mouthfeel punctuated by granular pieces of hazelnut which gave a good contrast. The ganache itself wad , in CTs words authentic, not some generic paste. The following day, CT said rather despondently "very sorry to see the end of those".

I'm submitting this to Caroline and Ros's Alpha Bakes hosted this month by The More than Occasional Baker - L is for Love!