Oreo Cheesecake Truffles

A soft chocolaty center en-robed in milk chocolate that come together quick. These were huge hit at the Christmas exchange and didn't suck up my oven!

Ingredients:
1 (16 ounce) package OREO Chocolate Sandwich Cookies, divided
1 (8 ounce) package Cream Cheese, softened
2 (8 ounce) packages BAKER'S Semi-Sweet Baking Chocolate or Chocolate Almond bark (what ever chocolate you want to use really)

Servings: ~30-40 truffles

Instructions:
Crush the heck out of ~36 cookies or so, your looking for about 3 cups of crushed Oreos. I did this with my little mini chopper, but you could easily do this with determination, a rolling pin and a bag. While the recipe is forgiving a few chunks are not so bad, you want the bulk of the cookies to be down to coarse sand size. Feel free to blitz a few extra cookies and set aside if you want to sprinkle the cookie bits on top.

With the ~3 cups of cookie sand, add in the 8 oz package of cream cheese and blend until smooth. I did this in my kitchen aid as blending it smooth with a spoon was proving unwieldy. You want this to be smooth, really smooth and well mixed. Don't worry about crushing the cookies more, get out the hand mixer or use the stand mixer and mix well but don't whip, no need to get air in there.

You should end up with something the consistency of play dough or a little thinner, this stuff should be thick (hence the difficult to mix). If it seems too thin to work with or your house is too hot, put it all in the fridge, covered and let it chill for a bit. Then take it out and roll it into balls. I used my 1 tbs cookie scoop* leveled (found this to be a good 2 bite truffle size) to measure out the "dough" and then rolled it into balls using my hands.

Once these are in ball form, chill them! Heck if you want freeze them. Your about to dunk them into melted chocolate and the colder they are the "cleaner" your chocolate will stay. So if you don't want crumbs in your chocolate, chilling is crucial and if you don't want a mess, it is still important.

Pop these in the fridge or freezer for an hour or two or over night. When your ready, bring the ~16 oz of your preferred chocolate up to temp in a double boiler**. Don't cheat and use the microwave your going to end up going back and forth warming and stirring and wasting a lot of time. Once the chocolate is melted, take some of the truffles out (do this in batches and keep the rest in the fridge or freezer).

Drop one truffle at a time into the melted chocolate, turn over gently to coat and then remove with a fork, tap the ball on the edge of the boiler to remove excess chocolate. Carefully use the edge of a knife (I used a fondue fork) to slide the ball onto waxed paper or a silicone sheet. If your going to sprinkle cookie bits on top, do it now before the chocolate cools. Repeat, for what seems like ever, with all of the cookie balls.

Refrigerate until firm, about 1 hour. Store leftover truffles, covered, in refrigerator.

Recipe From: Everywhere! This seems to be all over the internet, in pretty much this exact form. I think it is even on Nabisco and Philadelphia's web site. You will find almost no variation from site to site other than the kind of chocolate on the outside.

Some notes
*I used to think people who used cookie scoops were Nancy pants who didn't like to get their hands dirty. I bought the set of 3 after seeing so many sites using them, and now feel I should kick myself for waiting so long. Well worth it, use them all the time now.

**I cannot stress enough the importance of the double boiler on a project like this. The microwave method is going to be a huge pain, don't skip this part. You have 30-40 of these to do. Just get a a medium sized pot and a glass bowl. Fill the put 1/4-1/3 full of water and place the bowl on top. The water should not touch the bowl. Turn the heat onto medium, you want the water to simmer. Toss all the chocolate on top and stir as it melts. This will keep your chocolate the perfect temperature. And don't spend money to buy one, glass bowl and pot work great and you already have them.

I thought these were easy and the best part, oven free. I wont say super quick, dipping all these guys took a bit of time though you get faster after your first few. Using a silpat was perfect and any extra chocolate around the base could easily be broken off after so don't worry about a little waste on the silicone.

You can really use any cream filled cookie for this, though chocolate is every ones favorite it seems. I plan to try them out with Nutterbutters in the near future. I also adapted this recipe using gingersnaps, but I will post that on a separate blog as there are a few more nuances that I discovered.

Easy, almost no bake (only melted chocolate) and they seem to be a hit with the chocolate crowd.