These peanut butter truffles make the perfect festive treat

These truffles are somewhere between cookie dough and sticky caramel chocolates. They feature the most virtuous of ingredients yet still make an absolute show of any conventional chocolate bar. Born out of the necessity to always have something sweet in the freezer ready to go, they never fully harden and are just as delicious cold, as the chocolate cracks, or room temperature, as they melt between your fingers. There are a few steps to this recipe, but would be almost as delicious if you just chucked all the ingredients together and ate it from the bowl.

Peanut Butter Truffles

Makes about 20 truffles

Ingredients
8 of the best medjool dates
a big pinch of sea salt
½ cup NutShed original Peanut Butter
1 tbsp coconut sugar
½ cup ground almond
2 tbsp coconut flour
200g dark chocolate

Method
For your caramel:?Cover the dates in water from a recently boiled kettle and forget about them for 10 minutes. Drain them, reserving around a ¼ cup of water you might need next.?Remove the pits and pop into your food processor with a big pinch of sea and blitz. You might need to add some water here to loosen it up, do so in tablespoons. Taste it and add another pinch of sea salt if you’d rather; I think, the saltier the better.?Pop this in a bowl and into your freezer.?NB* this takes about 5 minutes, after soaking, so even better if you do it the day before and leave it in there.

For your dough:?Add everything else, except the dark chocolate and mix well; you can do this by hand or chuck it all into your processor.

Assembly:?You don’t have to be too precious with this, it’ll taste delicious regardless.?Dampen your hands and roll the dough into little balls, and pop them onto a plate. When you’re halfway through, put them in the freezer and continue with the second half. When you’re done, grab your caramel and first batch of dough balls (and pop the second batch in).

Put a dough ball in the palm of your hand and with your other hand flatten it out gently until the surface area has doubled. With a teaspoon, or your fingers, drop a small lump of caramel into the centre of the dough and then close it over on itself, sealing the edges and sealing in the delicious, salty caramel. Roll it back into a ball, then pop it back in the freezer while you melt the chocolate.

To melt the chocolate, chop it into small pieces (or use chips) and place in a heatproof bowl over a simmering pot of water. Stir it every so often and lift when a few pieces still remain to melt. With a fork at each side, lift one of your truffles and drop it into the chocolate. Toss it around and when it’s all covered, lift it out, let it drip a second and place your truffle on a plate lined with parchment.

Decorate with your favourite things, we used Achill Sea Salt, rose petals, freeze dried raspberries and pistachio and then leave the chocolate to harden.

Recipe courtesy of NutShed. For details on NutShed’s plant-based nut butters and other products visit www.nutshed.ie, or follow them on Instagram @nutshed_