Chocolate Truffles

I combined several recipes for chocolate truffles and added several unique ingredients to come up with what I liked best. There are several ingredients that are purely optional if you don't want to use them. I added a peanut butter and chocolate mixture called Dark Chocolate Dreams by Peanut Butter & Company, which is a sandwich shop in Greenwich Village. I know that sounds cool and artsy, but I bought it at Target.

Chocolate Truffles
16 oz semi-sweet chocolate
(you can use an 8 oz bar of baking chocolate combined with 8 oz of morsels if you want to)
2/3 cup heavy cream
5 tbsp butter
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup confectioners sugar
1 tsp kahlua (opt)
2 tbsp marshmallow creme (opt)
2 tbsp chocolate peanut butter (opt)

Melt chocolate with heavy cream in the top of a double boiler over medium heat. Be careful not to scorch it. Whisk in confectioners sugar until well-blended. Add butter and stir until melted. Add vanilla and any remaining desired ingredients. Pour into a bowl and chill at least 3 hours or overnight. When the bowl is removed from the refrigerator, leave it out for about an hour to allow to soften. Roll into small balls (this is VERY messy!) and roll into various toppings. Chill until ready to serve. Yield: about 46 truffles

Melt together in a double boiler:
I chose chopped pecans, chopped pistachios, cocoa, and mini morsels. I chopped the nuts in my food processor. The M & M minis actually didn't work well. I also rolled a few of them in white sprinkles.

This is how they looked:

For gifts, I like to place them in small gold candy cups and put them in a small box. This box is made by Wilton and I actually found it difficult to fold properly. It ended up working, but did not turn out as perfectly as I would have liked:

Then I tied the boxes up with ribbon and put stickers on them. You can keep these refrigerated like this until you are ready to give them away. This recipe should make enough to fill 9 little boxes.