Mint Oreo Truffles

So this is my last post before Serena returns from Mexico (and it is consequently her turn), and I saved the best for last-before-Serena-gets-back:

Mint Oreo Truffles.

They are awesome. I first had Oreo Truffles around Christmas, I think, at my aunt's house. I'm not sure of the exact recipe that was used in that case, but Serena and I found a few recipes on the internets and changed them around a bit to make our own.

This is a very simple recipe with only a few ingredients:

1 pkg. Oreo Cookies (we used Mint Oreo Cookies)

1 8 oz. pkg. Cream Cheese, softened (we used the 1/3 less fat Neufchatel Cheese)

1 pkg. Dark Chocolate & Mint chips

1 pkg. White Chocolate chips

In some way, crush the Oreos (using a food processor probably works best, but in its absence we just beat them a lot in a ziplock bag) and then mix those with the cream cheese until well blended and you have a creamy dough (there should be no white traces of cream cheese). This is probably easiest in a blender, but we just used a wooden spoon.

Shape into 1-inch balls. This is a messy job.

Next comes the tricky part (for us, at least): melting the chocolate for dipping. Due to our complete lack of chocolate melting experience, we failed miserably on the first try:

  Note: Sticking a couple of mugs filled with chocolate chips in the microwave for a while is NOT a good way to melt them properly

We then asked Google how to melt chocolate and it informed us of double boilers and lots of other methods. We decided to improvise and combine methods to form a new one: chocolate chips in mugs in a pan of boiling water:

 

This kind of worked, but not really well enough. We then went to Target and invested in some sort of melting pot thing (I forget what it was called) but that only worked acceptably for the dark and mint chocolate chips:

The white chocolate was more difficult and we actually ended up adding a little vegetable oil to it to keep it from hardening, which actually worked very well.

For your benefit, here are some actual chocolate melting instructions:

How To Melt Chocolate - Using one of the below methods to melt the chocolate chips:

Double Boiler: In the top of a double boiler over hot water, not boiling water (don't let the bottom of the bowl touch the water, melt chocolate; stirring until smooth. Be careful boiling water may cause steam droplets to get into chocolate which can result in "seizing," when the chocolate becomes stiff and grainy. If you don't have a double boiler you can improvise one by placing a glass or stainless steel bowl over a pot of simmering water. Remove from heat. Let the chocolate cool slightly, but it should not set.

Microwave Melting Chocolate: In a microwave-safe bowl, melt chocolate chips using either the defrost setting or 10-percent power in the microwave. Microwave for 1 minute, then check and stir. If you need more time, do it in 10 to 20 seconds intervals and check and stir after each addition of microwave time. Remove the container from the microwave and stir the chocolate until completely melted. Baking chips and baking chocolate may appear formed and un-melted after heating but will become fluid after stirring.

When we finally got the chocolate dippable, we realized we had no toothpicks to dip the truffles into the chocolate, and so we improvised again and made a toothpick using a plastic fork:

And finally, we put the finished touches on them using a regular fork to drizzle white chocolate on the dark ones and dark chocolate on the white ones:

Then just refrigerate 1 hour or until firm.

Amazingly, these somehow still turned out great which leads me to believe they are VERY hard to mess up.

And what happened to our mugs of crappily melted chocolate you might ask? We scrapped out the nasty dried parts and made extra chocolaty hot chocolate in them:

The end.