Snickerdoodle hot chocolate truffle balls

A couple months ago, we were at a restaurant that was giving out free snickerdoodle hot cocoa. I had to make this at home. Somehow, this transformed into making 200 hot chocolate truffle balls for the neighbors . . . without testing the recipe first.

200 truffle balls later, it has proven worthy.

Recipe (for <200!)

• 1 half pint whipping cream
• 1/2 Tbsp butter (optional, but it adds great flavor!)
• 3 Tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp cream of tartar (or to taste)
• 12 oz (2 cups) milk chocolate chips*
• optional: cinnamon sugar for rolling

1. Heat the whipping cream and optional butter in a saucepan over medium heat until butter melts and cream is just barely boiling. Add sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and optional cream of tartar and stir to dissolve and combine.

2. Remove from heat and stir in chocolate chips. Continue stirring until chocolate chips are melted. (It may look a tiiiny bit grainy; that's okay.)

3. Pour into baking dish or bowl. Cover and chill 2 hours or until firm. (You just made ganache! You can skip to the hot chocolate by adding warm milk until you reach your desired consistency. But come on. Let's go big.)

4. The original hot chocolate truffle balls recipe calls for scooping 2 tablespoons of the ganache mixture, shaping them into a ball by hand, and wrapping and chilling them. When I made these as gifts, I found a much easier method: a small cookie dough scoop and mini muffin wrappers. Scoop, plop, stick into gift bags. BAM.

5. Optionally, you may roll the truffles in cinnamon sugar. However, you'll want to do this immediately prior to serving, and the sugar does make them crunchy, so it's really best for looks on a truffle ball that will be made into hot chocolate momentarily.


Keep finished truffles covered in fridge or freezer until serving. Best yet, keep them under lock and key, because you will be sneaking one every chance you get. Or at least I will.

Yield: 20 small or 10 large truffle balls.

To make hot chocolate: heat 6-8 oz milk and drop in one small truffle. (You might add 1 additional tsp of sugar as well.) Stir until truffle ball melts.

*You can use whatever flavor of chocolate chips you like here. A number of the recipes I came across initially used white chocolate chips, but I wanted chocolate in my hot chocolate (shocker). In my gigantor batch, I used about 20% extra dark chocolate chips and the rest semi-sweet, but the next time I make this, I'm definitely opting for milk chocolate chips, which is what I recommend here.

These may or may not have been so good that more than one of the friends I shared them with commanded me never to do that again . . . because they ate a dozen. By themselves. Without making them into hot chocolate.

That's a pity.