Valentine's Day Candy: Homemade Truffles and Caramels

Truffles are something that are often seen as hard or expensive. Also very tasty. This Valentine's Day, they can be neither hard, nor expensive. But they can be tasty! Below is a simple recipe for truffles.

Truffles:

Ingredients:
3 Tbsp heavy (whipping) cream
1 Tbsp instant coffee
2 cups chocolate chips
1/2 cup margarine
1 tsp vanilla

Stuff to coat them in - crushed peanuts, pretzels or crushed hard peppermints, shredded coconut, sprinkles, cookie crumbs, etc.

Directions:

Blend cream and coffee. Let stand for 5 minutes.

Melt chocolate chips until smooth. With a wire whisk, blend in margarine, cream mixture, and vanilla. Refrigerate (covered) until firm. Allow to return to room temperature. Shape into small balls and coat well. Store in an airtight container in the fridge. Makes 2-3 dozen.

To make them more in the spirit of Valentine's Day, you could use heart, or red sprinkles to coat them in. If you really wanted to, you could make pink or red cookies, crush them and coat the truffles in that. Any sugar cookie recipe would do.

Caramels:

Caramels are also something people tend to view as hard, but here is a simple recipe I got from allrecipes.com.

Ingredients:
2 cups white flour
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup corn syrup
1 cup evaporated milk
1 pint heavy whipping cream
1 cup butter
1 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions:

First Grease a 12x15 inch pan

In a medium sized pot combine sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup, evaporated milk, heavy whipping cream and butter. Monitor the temperature closely with a candy thermometer. When the mixture reaches 250F remove the pot from the heat.

Quickly stir in vanilla and pour into pan.

Allow mixture to cool completely.

Cut the mixture into pieces after cooled completely.

A cute idea for valentines day would be little hearts or use red/pink paper to wrap them in. They are usually cut into squares and wrapped in wax paper. If you could find specialty Valentine's waxed paper from a gormet foods store or online, that would be the way to go. You wouldn't want to wrap them in plastic wrap as they would easily stick.

Enjoy!