Turtle Cheesecake Truffles

I meant to make these for Dan’s mom on Mother’s Day, since turtle chocolate is one of her favorite candy treats. But, things got busy and I didn’t have time to whip up a batch of truffles before our trip to Boston last weekend. I ended up buying her some Godiva chocolates, but I really wish I could have given her some of these turtle truffles. Maybe next year.

Word on the street is that grocery stores actually sell bags of crushed graham crackers. I don’t know which stores these are, but I’ve never seen one that sold graham cracker crumbs. Every time I make cheese cake I have to crush my own frickin’ crackers. FYI, crushing crackers with the bottom of a glass is way more effective than using a food processor.

I had two containers of marscapone cheese left over from the last time I made tiramisu, so I decided to use that for my cheesecake base instead of the usual Philadelphia cream cheese. I originally thought that three months in the fridge would have ruined the marscapone, but it was totally fine. That makes me a little worried about the amount of preservatives in the stuff, but…I’m not going to think about that right now.

Remember how much trouble I had coating those chocolate chip cookie dough truffles? No problems this time! Jade over at the Steamy Kitchen blog had the perfect method for dipping truffles: (1) make sure the melted chocolate is nice and liquid-y, (2) drop the cheesecake ball into the mixture and make sure it’s well  covered, then (3) lift it out with a fork and let the excess chocolate run out through the tines of the fork. Voila!

Oh man, these truffles are so good. They actually taste like cheesecake! Which is already good in and of itself, but when you cover it in chocolate, drizzle it with caramel, and top it with nuts…amazing!

Recipe can be found here, courtesy of the Steamy Kitchen Blog.