Turning a time honored holiday tradition into a bite-sized Christmas delight.

The creation of my newest recipe came from a very tragic event. Every year after Thanksgiving I make fruitcakes and soak them in brandy the weeks prior to Christmas. Every year they turn out perfectly moist, fruity and simply delicious. Every year I do this and succeed in my endeavor except for this year. This year my fruitcakes were ruined!

I don’t know what really happened. Instead of baking into a delightful little cakes they turned into a soft fruity dumpling, not what I wanted at all. To say I was devastated is an understatement. This had never happened to me before in all my attempts for the past six years! All I can think about was all the wasted ingredients and brandy, it absolutely broke my heart. After I had a little cry and calmed down from my failure, my husband gave me the sage advice to not let my little cakes go completely to waste. “They're obviously baked and look cooked through. You should be able to make something from them,'' he said. From this point, the ideas were churning in my head, “ I can do something with these,” I thought! I was in an absolute tizzy thinking of what to do and then it came to me like a bolt of lightning. I would turn these mushy little cakes into bite-sized fruitcake truffles! It was the perfect solution to repurpose my not so perfect fruit cakes. In one fell swoop I can remove the possibility of any food waste while creating a new Christmas treat, it’s a win win and a personal triumph. 

The recipe in itself is very, very simple. Take any store bought or homemade fruitcake, process it into a paste, freeze them, coat them in white chocolate and make them look pretty. It’s really very straight forward and only requires a little finesse with the chocolate work but don’t let that scare you. I’m terrible with chocolate work and usually keep it as simple as possible, even then I’m still not happy with it. But I look at it this way, I'm a home baker not a chocolatier and I can only do my best. Unfortunately, my best chocolate work looks quite sloppy and I know I have to work on it. Fortunately, even the ugliest truffles still taste delicious and these are no exception! With a rich fruit cake interior and a perfectly snappy white chocolate shell, these truffles are pure heaven, who knew?! Well I know now and they will most certainly be making an appearance on my Christmas cookie trays. How about yours? 

Fruitcake Truffles

1 fruitcake of your choosing

2 bars of white chocolate 

Christmas sprinkles

In a food processor, blend your stale or failure of a fruitcake. Pulse the food processor until the fruitcake becomes a blended paste. If your fruitcake seems very crumbly and wont hold a shape, you can add a half block of cream cheese or a ¼ cup of brandy to turn the cake into a paste-like mixture.

With a tablespoon, portion out the mixture and roll into bite-sized balls. Place each ball on a parchment lined baking sheet. Once the sheet is filled, place the baking sheet in the freezer and freeze the cake balls. Freeze for at least 1 hour or until they are no longer sticky and slightly hardened. 

Once the cake balls are frozen, melt the white chocolate over a double boiler or in the microwave; whatever you prefer. When your chocolate is melted, dip the fruitcake balls in the white chocolate, taking care to let the excess chocolate run off. Set each chocolate dipped ball on a parchment lined plate or baking sheet. While the chocolate is still wet, top with Christmas sprinkles of your choosing. I chose little holly leaf candy sprinkles so they could mimic the appearance of a traditional Christmas cake. 

Leave the chocolate to set before placing your handcrafted truffles in an airtight container and storing them in the fridge. Your fruit cake truffles are ready to be enjoyed!

*Notes:  It is very important that you make sure your fruitcake balls are frozen before dipping them in the chocolate. If they are still soft when dipping they will start to break apart in the chocolate. 

If the heat of your kitchen gets to be too much for the cake balls and they start to soften or get sticky, place them back in the freezer to re-harden. 

When lining your sheet pans make sure to use parchment paper and not wax paper. Wax paper will make the finished truffles stick and it’s not very pleasant to work with. 

You can easily add lollipop sticks to these cake truffles to turn them into fruit cake pops.