Chocolate truffle egg nests

This Easter I fancied having a go at making homemade chocolate truffle mini eggs to put in some good old fashioned shredded wheat chocolate nests. The whole process of melting chocolate, stirring in a cereal and then spooning it into colourful cases makes me feel about 10 - which I quite enjoyed! I'm really pleased with how they turned out as the whole family loved them and they looked pretty too. As an added bonus you get some wholewheat from the nests and the benefits that a bit of quality dark chocolate  gives you too (I used one with 85% cocoa solids).

I used plastic moulds to make the eggs, the other eggs are from a packet of Whizzers - a vegan version of mini eggs and absolutely delish. These haven't yet appeared in supermarkets to my knowledge but I know of a couple of independent health food stores that stock them (some year round) and they can be bought online places like veganstore.co.uk.

 Ingredients

Nests

• Shredded wheat for the nests (about 6 should make around 12 nests)
• Around 100g vegan dark chocolate 
• 1 packet of whizzers and homemade truffle eggs for decoration

Truffle eggs (makes ~ 25) (adapted from BBC good food)
Shells

• 100g vegan white chocolate
• 100g vegan dark chocolate
• Small bit of extra dark chocolate to melt to stick the eggs together

Filling

• 150g vegan dark chocolate
• 250g icing sugar
• 250g ground almonds
• 4 tsp vanilla

For the truffle slab (which I used to make square truffles and to fill some eggs) I used the fabulous recipe on Steven's blog, see it here http://lustrousmusings.blogspot.com/2010/03/hazelnut-truffles-reverse-engineering.html 

1. First melt the dark chocolate to create the shells of the eggs. I did this in a microwave but you can use a bowl over a pan of hot water instead if you like. Carefully spoon the melted chocolate into the moulds using the back of a teaspoon to drag the chocolate up to cover the sides of the mould too. Don't put too much chocolate in or there'll be no room for the truffle filling.

2. Do the same with the white chocolate (if you don't have quite enough moulds, carry on past this step and then come back and reuse the dark chocolate moulds once the shells have been popped out) and then leave the moulds somewhere cool to set.

3. While the shells are setting prepare the truffle filling by melting the dark chocolate and then simply stirring in the ground almonds, icing sugar and vanilla. (A taste test at this stage by a non vegan declared the truffle mixture to taste like Ferrero Rocher, good or bad you decide)

I then aslo made up a batch of truffle mixture from http://lustrousmusings.blogspot.com/2010/03/hazelnut-truffles-reverse-engineering.html  adding a little extra sugar for more sweetness.

4. Fill your chocolate shells with the truffle mixture, I also then sealed some that needed a bit extra filling with more melted dark chocolate. (The flatter you can keep the mixture at this stage, the easier it will be to stick the two halves together without having to handle them too much and melt the mould design off with your fingers)

5. Leave to cool for a little while longer until set and then pop the filled egg halves out of the moulds.

 

6. Now use some melted dark chocolate to stick the egg halves together, I used one white and one dark half for each egg.

7. Leave the eggs in a cool place and crumble the shredded wheat to prepare your nests. Melt the chocolate and stir in the shredded wheat until you cannot incorporate any more into the chocolate.

8. Spoon the nest mixture into paper cases and fill with Whizzer eggs and your homemade eggs. Serve with any leftover truffle mixture cut into chunks and dusted with cocoa for an even bigger chocolate hit!

Being my first attempt these were a little fiddly and I feel the eggs could be even more lovely looking if I had of flattened the egg halves better whilst still in the mould to avoid over handling the chocolate when removed from the moulds which melted and messied them up a bit. Mind you, I didn't have any returned.