Easy Cherry Ripe Truffles are a tribute to the popular Australian candy. It only takes three-ingredients and about 15 minutes of prep time to make these delicious cherry coconut candies.
Last night I had 10 people over for dinner, baking and Easter egg dyeing. It was a very international group – 6 Americans, 3 Syrians and a South African. I have a small apartment right now and 5 of these people were small children so this required careful planning.
My South African friend Sandra comes from a large family so she’s used to crowds and chaos. I know a little bit about crowd management from raising my own three kids. We planned to divide and conquer. Start with a simple dinner and then Sandra would have half the kids dyeing Easter eggs while I had the other half in the kitchen. Manageable right?
Well, you know what they say about plans. Sandra got tied up on the other side of town so I was alone with a bunch of people who expected something to happen. And you know what 5 kids are like when it’s dinner time and there’s nothing to do.
While the water for the pasta was heating, I sat the kids down to make Palmier bunnies. They’re a take on these moose palmiers I made at Christmas. I was so busy I didn’t get any photos but the kids loved it and some of them even looked like bunny faces. I cut pink marshmallows into fourths (making them round and thin) for the ears and we used mini M&Ms for the eyes and mouth. We glued everything on with a little vanilla glaze.
They took just enough time to get dinner ready. We ate and Sandra still hadn’t made it so I brought out chocolate chip cookie dough. I thought the American kids would like a taste of home and the Syrians could try something new. The kids took turns scooping the dough onto the cookie sheet and I left a sheet of parchment paper for them to scoop out the rest while the first batch baked.
I made the filling for these easy cherry ripe truffles ahead of time. I knew coating the frozen filling with chocolate would be easy and fun for the kids. The three year old got a little over eager and dumped so many into the melted chocolate that it hardened before we could get them all coated so some of them are a little wonky.
Now a confession about the filling. It’s visually unappealing. If you don’t add food coloring it looks like raw ground beef. The photo below is an open truffle with red food coloring. Quite frankly, I think it still looks like ground beef but none of my taste-testers has cared so far.
Thankfully Sandra arrived just as we finished making the cherry ripe truffles. She took charge of the egg dying so I could clean up some of the disaster in my kitchen. The kids had a blast. The Syrian family had never had chocolate chip cookies before. They loved them and asked for the recipe. Everyone took cookies and bunny palmiers home. The eggs will go to church for the service on Sunday.
About these easy cherry ripe truffles. I have an Australian friend who raves about cherry ripe. He always brings some back from Australia to share with the rest of us.
The Cadbury version uses glace cherries (maraschino cherries) and milk chocolate so it’s quite sweet. I substituted cherry pie filling and dark chocolate. The pureed pie filling is perfect for holding the filling together and makes it just sweet enough. In fact, my Australian friend says these are better than the original.
My friend Barb over at Creative Culinary has a wonderful recipe for canned cherry pie filling if you can’t find it where you live. Truthfully, Barb’s pie filling would be soooo much better in these.
Easy Cherry Ripe Truffles
Ingredients
- 1 can cherry pie filling (21 oz)
- 2 3/4 - 3 cups finely shredded dry coconut (I used unsweetened but sweetened would work).
- red food coloring (optional)
- 400 - 600 g (4 - 6 bars) good quality dark chocolate broken into small pieces
Instructions
Put the cherry pie filling in a food processor and pulse to desired consistency. I completely pulverized mine but the Australian candy has very small pieces of cherries.
Pour into a bowl and mix in the dried coconut to get a sticky filling that you can form into balls. If desired add some red food coloring.
Scoop into 1 inch balls and freeze for at least 30 minutes.
Melt chocolate in a double boiler. Drop frozen filling into the chocolate and turn with a fork to coat. Place coated truffles on parchment paper and refrigerate until hardened.