Chocolate Truffles (dairy free)

A friend of mine makes amazing chocolate truffles. Whenever they are around, I try to limit myself because they contain dairy, which I am definitely allergic to.  I have been thinking about how to make a rich and creamy truffle without dairy and found this recipe at Nourished Kitchen.  I love that the recipe contains coconut milk and the truffles don't have to be formed into perfect little balls.  These are more rustic.  I had all the ingredients so I decided to give this recipe a try.  (See the link above for all the ingredients and their amounts).

The recipe from Nourished starts with 10 oz of 85% dark chocolate. I wanted to try it for the first time with a slightly less dark chocolate and I really like Scharffen Berger's 70%.  So first, I chopped up the chocolate.

Then placed all the chocolate pieces in a large glass bowl, added the spices... orange zest, cinnamon, chipotle powder, vanilla bean and sea salt.

Heated the coconut milk and oil together on the stove.

Then poured the milk over the chocolate, and stirred. I really didn't think all the chocolate was going to melt and I was ready to make a double boiler, but I was patient and kept stirring.

Eventually, it all melted and became smooth and glossy.

The recipe from Nourished instructs to put the melted chocolate mixture on a plate lined with parchment and try to form into a log. I thought my mixture was too thin to pour onto a plate so I used a bowl instead.

Then I placed the bowl in the fridge to cool and harden.

The Nourished recipe says to leave the chocolate in the refrigerator for 8 to 12 hours. I left mine overnight, although it was ready to cut after about 6 to 8 hours.  I then took the chocolate brick off the parchment and placed it on a cutting board. It was easy to cut the chocolate into squares. In fact I had a hard time making mine look as imperfect as the ones in her original blog pictures. Mine came out as more regular squares. They looked really nice though.  I coated some of them in cocoa powder and some in palm sugar.  I don't have any good pictures of the finished product, but I plan to make these again. Next time I want to leave out the chipotle powder. While I think this is a great flavor combination with the orange and cinnamon, I just don't like the chipotle aftertaste with my chocolate. I want a pure chocolate only experience when I eat truffles.

I highly recommend this recipe for any of you that love chocolate, coconut milk and a "Mexican" chocolate type flavor.