Irish Coffee – that iconic combination of strong black coffee and whiskey with a dollop of slightly sweetened cream on top – is an amazing combination of flavors in and of itself, but add those flavors to chocolate? DIVINE. Enter Irish Coffee Truffles.

Silky, creamy, and slightly boozy, these truffles will make your St. Patrick’s Day this year – trust me. And if you are generous enough to share with your friends, they’ll think you’ve found the end of the rainbow. That’s how good they are. Plus, they only have 4 ingredients and are incredibly easy to make.

Have I convinced you yet? Good.

Let’s make Irish Coffee Truffles!

Basic truffles are really just a chocolate ganache, chilled until firm enough to scoop into balls. To make ganache, you warm heavy cream until almost boiling, add in your chocolate and stir until smooth. Then add whatever flavoring you want. Chill, scoop, and you have truffles! You can dip them in more chocolate if you want a chocolate coating, or just roll them in cocoa powder, powdered sugar, nuts, coconut, sprinkles – pretty much anything you like.

A word on ingredients

Since this is such a simple recipe, the quality of ingredients you use will make a huge difference in the flavor of your truffles – especially the chocolate. Use the best quality chocolate your budget allows. Chocolate in bar form, chopped into small bits, is the best choice, because it won’t have the added stabilizers that chocolate chips do (it’s what helps them keep their shape in cookies) so it will melt much more smoothly. However, as you can see in the photos, I opted for chocolate chips this time around because that’s what I had on hand. They still turned out great.

Similarly, you’ll want to use the best quality whiskey you can afford. I am far from being a whiskey expert, so I can’t really speak to what makes whiskey high quality. All I’ll say is use something you like the taste of – this isn’t the place to use up something you don’t like.

Espresso powder can usually be found in specialty kitchen stores or gourmet food markets (or online of course). I bought mine at the Golden Fig in St Paul, but I’ve also used King Arthur Flour’s espresso powder and it was great. Can’t find espresso powder, or don’t want to spend big bucks on it? I just stumbled across a blog post showing how to make your own. I haven’t done it myself yet, but if you want to give it a try check it out here. And once you have espresso powder, try adding it to other desserts – like these Kahlua Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Share the Joy!

Once you’ve gathered your ingredients, you’re just a hop, skip, and a jump away from delicious chocolatey truffles (or a jig, if we’re sticking to the Irish theme). Fair warning: it’s hard to eat just one (or two, or three…). The good news is they freeze well and make great gifts. I mean, if you run around handing out free truffles, I don’t think anyone will be mad. Maybe just leave the Leprechaun costume at home.

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