Guinness Truffles

My post about Guinness cake pops is, by far, the most popular post on my blog. This is really kind of funny to me because I rarely bake. Nor is this a cooking blog. In fact, I dislike baking and typically only do it on special occasions. 

But, the people have spoken. They love their baking. And their beer. And their Guinness.

So, to appease the masses, I'm following up today with another Guinness related post. Guinness Truffles! This recipe is straight from the Guinness folks. Guinness really won me over during our trip to Ireland. Not only is their beer much more delicious over there, but they also gave away free Guinness recipe cards.



I love free things.



The Guinness Truffle recipe is the only one I've tried so far. Not bad, Guinness. Not bad at all. My only complaint is that for being a Guinness-inspired recipe, there is really very little Guinness involved. I'm talking not even a whole bottle. If you want people to buy your beer you should call for mass quantities of beer in your recipes.

So here is the European version:



I, of course, had to translate into more sensible units. See here:

 2.2 pounds dark chocolate in small chunks
13.5 fl. ounces cream
3.5 fl. ounces Guinness
Zest of 1 orange
cocoa or coconut powder (I used coconut powder)

I really just followed the recipe on the card which was remarkably simple.

 Based on previous chocolate melting experiences I made a tweak- I shut the heat off once the cream-Guinness mixture was done boiling so as to not overheat the chocolate.

The other adjustment I made was the addition of sweetener. My chocolate was nice and melted once I decided to taste it. Not sure if it was the cold I had, but I felt like some sweetener was necessary. I was afraid it was too late in the game for real sugar so I used some liquid Stevia instead. 20 drops to be exact. Frankly I don't use Stevia very often. So I have no idea if really added any sweetness. (My nose was stuffy.)

 

Ah, yes. There was also a third adjustment. Where the recipe tells you to let the mixture cool a bit until you can roll it into balls in your hands.... yea that did not happen for me. I'm not sure if it was my reduced cooking heat that did it, or what. But I had to refrigerate the mixture for quite awhile until the mixture had solidified enough where I could form shapes that resembled balls. 

Yup, easy peasy.

All of those "adjustments" I made are the reason why I dislike baking. Baking is not forgiving. In the end the truffles tasted fine. They did not taste like Guinness but they tasted pretty good!

Ireland

So we're back from Ireland. We slipped out last Saturday, were there for a week plus one day, and largely avoided social media while we were there. You know, so that robbers wouldn't stalk us on Facebook, know we were away, and try to rob our house. It makes complete sense.

 I have 389 pictures to weed through, but here are a few of my favorites:

Cliffs of Moher

Random countryside

Dingle

Gap of Dunloe

Dublin

One of the many, many sheep we saw

All in all, an awesome trip but I'm glad to be home. I ate too many Irish breakfasts. Drank too much. And couldn't quite manage to get used to the whole driving on the left side of the road. (Particularly when said road is narrow and winding.)

Random thing I loved: the long days. The sun was up from before 6am till past 10pm. It was awesome. It made it so much easier to have full and productive days! 

Thank you Ireland for the amazing vacation.