Hazelnut Truffles

These Hazelnut Truffles are just amazing!!! They are super Delicious, very Light with Rich nutty flavor. I make them without any special occasions, to tell you the truth, but they would be a very yummy addition to your Easter dessert menu.

My husband felt in love with a similar dessert from a local Russian store long time ago. Every time we go food shopping to that specific russian store, my husband will get at least 2 “Hazelnut Truffles ” for sure: one for me and one for himself. Usually, he eats his dessert first and then, he’ll be looking at me, hoping that I’ll share mine with him☺️. Each time I ate it, I was trying to figure out what exactly it is made out of.

One day I was planning to bake a sponge cake. Once it was baked, my plans changed and I didn’t know what to do with it. Since we try not to waste food, I decided to use it up by experimenting a little bit.

These Hazelnut Truffles  turned out so delicious,  that as soon as my family gathered for tea, these mini desserts were all gone. While the recipe was fresh in my memory, I quickly wrote it down in my notebook and since then, I started making them for my family quite often.

I really want you to give them a try!!! You won’t  regret it❤️.

Ingredients:

For the Sponge Cake:

5 eggs

1 cup sugar

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 tsp vanilla extract

For the Cream:

8 oz Philadelphia cream cheese, room temperature

1/2 cup sugar

8 oz cool whip

1/2 tsp almond extract

1/2 cup chopped hazelnuts (roasted), plus more for coating the Truffles

How to make a Sponge Cake:

Preheat oven to 360 degrees.

In Electric Mixer on the high speed, mix eggs , vanilla extract and sugar for 15 minutes

Turn off the mixer and add flour to the egg mixture. Gently combine everything together with a spatula.

Bake for 25-30 min.

Cool the Sponge cake.

Lets make a cream, while our sponge cake is cooling:

With an electric mixer, mix the cream cheese (make sure it’s room temperature) with sugar to soft consistency.

Add almond extract and cool whip, slowly mix everything together until cool whip is well combined (low speed 10-15 seconds)

In a medium bowl, break the cooled sponge cake into pieces (do not play with it too much because later, when you will be combining cake with the cream it will get into very small chunks)

Combine sponge cake with cream and  add 1/2 cup well chopped hazelnuts (you can use a blender to chop the hazelnuts, just don’t over blend, you don’t want to get a hazelnut flour)

As you see on the picture, I mixed the batter and cake very well, using my hands. Now it is very smooth and mixed evenly.

Form the cake into similar size balls, and roll the balls in finely chopped hazelnuts. Refrigerate overnight or at least  couple of hours.

My amazing helper, Rachel, is showing off her completed masterpieces :).

As you can see on this picture, I have previously made these Hazelnut Truffles  for an event. It was my first time making them for large party, but I was happily surprised at the amount people came up to me afterwards, giving amazing feedback about these delicious mini desserts  😍.

On this picture ☝️ we used walnuts for coating the balls. But usually, I do them with hazelnuts since hazelnuts are more crunchy and will coat balls more even and full.

And here ☝️☝️☝️I used hazelnuts for coating and I also used blender to get smaller chunks of nuts😋

Enjoy!!!