Description

A no-bake dessert that helps you use up whatever goodies you have on hand – nuts, nut butters, coconut, chocolate, Nutella, dried fruit, coconut. This is a fast and delicious way to treat yourself and clean out your pantry all at once.

Ingredients

Nuts. Roasted and ground into a powder in a food processor.
Almond meal. If you have it and want to use it in addition to the nuts. Because I think roasted nuts taste a thousand times better than raw nuts, I toasted the almond meal in the toaster oven.*
Peanut butter
Nutella and/or speculoos.
Coconut. I had shredded coconut, but found the shreds too big for creating a snowy coating on the balls. I pulsed it a few times in my food processor.
Cream. Or yogurt. Or some melted butter. Or, skip this step if you don’t do dairy. And keep an eye on the liquid ingredients because too much liquid could make it hard for the balls to hold their shape.
Coconut oil or milk. Possibly, instead of cream. Or do both!
Spices and other flavors. Cinnamon? Nutmeg? Vanilla? Cocoa powder? Any and all would be divine.
Dried fruit. Dates? Raisins? Optional, but they’d certainly give a little extra body, texture and sweetness to the truffles!
Anything else that sounds good to you. Seriously. As long as you still end up with a pasty “dough” that can be rolled into balls, you’re good.

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Instructions

Roast the nuts, if you’d like. Almond slices can be roasted on the stove top, stirring frequently (otherwise they burn). Pecans or walnuts are best roasted on a baking sheet at 350 degrees for 10 or so minutes (with some stirring halfway through). For this rendition, I started with some almond meal. To toast it, I just created a flat layer on a plate and hit “toast” on the toaster oven.
Pulverize the nuts in a food processor. We’re going for a very fine texture to keep the truffles smooth. But if you want things crunchier, this isn’t as important. Add the dried fruit, if using, to the food processor too.
Set aside the blended nuts and fruit.
Process the shredded coconut. The pieces of coconut straight out of the bag were too big. I dumped them in my mini food processor and rendered them into a snowy fluff.
Set aside a shallow bowl’s worth of coconut for coating the snow balls. The remaining coconut can stay in the food processor.
Mix! Combine the coconut with the ground nuts, peanut butter, Nutella and/or Speculoos. For ease of mixing, do this inside your food processor.
Add more yummy things. Cocoa powder? Cinnamon? Nutmeg? Vanilla?
Add a splash of cream or a dollop of yogurt if you’d like.
Stir/blend and evaluate. If the mixture looks thick enough to hold its shape in a ball, you’re just about there! To thicken, add more dry ingredients, like nut meal, dried fruit or coconut. To thin and make it more pliable, add more cream or another liquid fat.
Roll into balls with your hands, then roll the balls in the ground coconut mixture. (If you run out of coconut for rolling, no matter! Just use any combination of cinnamon, sugar, powdered sugar, cocoa, or some mix of all of the above for giving the balls a fine coating.)
Love them while they last. It won’t be long! Definitely not the 40 days it took Andrew Evans to get from Washington, DC to the southern tip of Argentina, where he boarded a ship for Antarctica. But the snowy truffles could be helpful for making friends on the bus!

Notes

A note on ratios: Most of the volume of the truffles will be taken up by nuts, coconut and, if you use it, dried fruit. So, no matter what your individual ratios are, try to start with about two cups of nut- and fruit-based ingredients to guarantee a substantial quantity of truffles.