#makingsweets

100g (4oz) plain chocolate

100g (4oz) milk chocolate

1 orange

5 tablespoons double cream

For the coating:

Cocoa powder or sugar strands or sprinkles – or all of these. Orange sprinkles and strands look especially good.

You will also need a heatproof bowl that fits snugly into a saucepan, so the bottom of the bowl doesn’t touch the bottom of the pan.

Method: 

1. Break up the chocolate and put it in the heatproof bowl. Fill the saucepan a quarter full of water. Put the pan over a medium heat, until the water starts to bubble. Then, take the pan off the heat.

2. Wearing oven gloves, carefully lower the bowl into the pan. Leave for 5 minutes, then pour in the cream stir until the chocolate has all melted. Wearing oven gloves, carefully lift the bowl out of the pan. 

3. Grate the zest from the outside of the orange, using the small holes on a grater. Just grate off the orange part – the white layer underneath tastes bitter. Then, add the zest to the melted chocolate and stir it in.

4. Leave the mixture to cool for 10 minutes, then put it in the fridge. Stir it every now and then. After around 1 hour, the mixture should be like soft butter. Take it out of the fridge. Spread each different type of coating on a small plate.

  5. Use a teaspoon to scoop up a teaspoonful of the chocolate mixture. Use your hands to roll it quickly into a ball, before it melts too much. Then, roll it in one of the coatings.

TIP: Abi used some special, edible glitter for her truffles!

6. Put the truffle on a clean plate. Make more in the same way, until all the chocolate mixture is used up. Put them in the fridge until you are ready to eat them - if you can wait that long!

Here are the two authors of Making Sweets, Abigail Wheatley and James Maclaine, 'taste-testing' the truffles. It's a hard life...

We hope you'll enjoy trying out this recipe yourself! If you do, please share photos of your finished truffles with us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram - we'd love to see how they turn out!

There are lots more brilliant ideas for sweets that you can make at home yourself in Making Sweets - you don't need special equipment and all the recipes are completely safe to do with children (no boiling sugar required).

See inside Making Sweets: