Pumpkin White Chocolate Truffles

Rich, spicy, and luscious, these seasonal truffles are the ultimate indulgence when you want a healthy solution to an autumnal sweet craving. And they’re great if you’re entertaining, too: they’re pretty unforgettable, so don’t be surprised if your guests ask for the recipe (that’s what the print button in the recipe box is for!) Or, you can pack them in a pretty box for an edible holiday gift. And finally, if you’re on a keto diet, they make wonderful fat bombs!

Tips for making the Pumpkin White Chocolate Truffles

The easiest way to make these is to melt everything in a microwave (that’s what I do all the time nowadays!) However, if you don’t have a microwave oven — or don’t want to use one — you can melt the truffle mixture in a small saucepan over a very low heat, mixing constantly.

The white chocolate for the chocolate coating is easy to melt in the microwave, too — or, again, you can use a saucepan placed over a very low heat and mix constantly.

Other than that, these treats are really easy to make, so let’s take a look at how to prepare them. (If you prefer to watch a video, you’ll find it below, right after the progress photos. In the video, I melt the ingredients in a saucepan so you’ll see that method also.)

First, take all the ingredients. Notice that I recommend salted butter: it adds a sinful, decadent note to the truffles. If you’re using unsalted butter, add a pinch of unrefined sea salt or Himalayan salt to the mixture.

If you’re using a microwave oven to melt the ingredients (like I am here), simply place all the ingredients into a microwave-safe bowl.

Heat on high for 30 seconds.

Stir well…

…and heat on high for 15 seconds.

Stir again. As you can see, this mixture looks perfect: the white chocolate is completely melted and the mixture is smooth after being stirred. As all microwave ovens are different, you may need to adjust the cooking time according to yours. Or, like I said before, you can also melt the ingredients in a saucepan over a very low heat.

When you have a smooth mixture, place it in the fridge for two to three hours, or until it has thickened so that you can shape it into balls.

Then, roll the mixture into 3/4-inch (2 cm) balls and place them on a greased plate or on parchment paper. Freeze for an hour or two, until completely frozen.

Meanwhile, melt the rest of the white chocolate. Again, I use a microwave oven, but you can also use a saucepan. I heat the chocolate in 30-second spans, stirring well after each.

Remove the frozen truffles from the freezer and dip them one by one in the melted white chocolate.

Holding the truffles with two forks works well: the excess white chocolate runs off between the tines. After dipping the truffles in the melted white chocolate, place them on a rack or on parchment paper.

After all truffles have been coated in white chocolate, place them in the fridge for an hour or until set.

Remove from the fridge just before serving and dig in!

Yum!

And here is the video how to make these truffles:

My Pumpkin White Chocolate Truffle experiments

I have to confess I already started developing this recipe last year — without getting a result that satisfied me. This year, however, I got some new ideas and perfected the recipe. It took some trial and error, but I finally got the result I was looking for.

So, last August (2016), I suddenly started craving Low-Carb Pumpkin White Chocolate Truffles. I started pondering which ingredients to use. First of all, I didn’t want cream cheese in my truffles — sorry, but in my opinion cream cheese doesn’t belong in real truffles! Sure, it’s delicious, but I don’t want my truffles tasting sour, not even a bit: I want them to be sweet, rich, and creamy, and that calls for butter or heavy cream. (If you prefer truffles with cream cheese, though, don’t worry: you’ll find lots of recipes for them on the web.)

At that time, I didn’t have any sugar-free white chocolate, so I wanted to use cocoa butter for the white chocolate part. Together with sweetener and cocoa cream (for a dairy-free option) or real butter, it should make a nice homemade white chocolate — or so I thought.

In addition to cocoa butter, sweetener, and butter or cocoa cream, I would naturally need pureed pumpkin and pumpkin pie spice — my all-time favorite spice! That warm, spicy scent enchants me each and every time I smell it. (Sometimes I open the pumpkin pie spice jar just to sniff it!)

For my first experiment I took 1/3 cup (80 ml) pumpkin puree, 1/2 cup + 1/4 cup (120 ml + 60 ml) powdered erythritol, 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice, 2 oz + 2 oz (60 g + 60 g) coconut cream and 4 oz + 7 oz (115 g + 200 g) cocoa butter. I mixed the pumpkin puree, 1/2 cup (120 ml) powdered erythritol, pumpkin pie spice, and 2 oz (60 g) coconut cream well in a bowl. Then I melted 4 oz (115 g) of cocoa butter and thoroughly mixed it into the pumpkin mixture with an electric mixer until the mixture was fluffy and pale.

After that I rolled the mixture into 1-inch (2.5 cm) balls and placed them on a greased plate. I froze the balls for an hour. Meanwhile, when the balls were in the freezer, I prepared the white chocolate coating: I placed the rest of the powdered erythritol (1/4 cup = 60 ml), the rest of the coconut cream (2 oz = 60 g), and the rest of the cocoa butter (7 oz = 200 g) into a small saucepan. I melted the mixture over a very low heat and mixed all the time, until completely melted.

I dipped the frozen pumpkin truffles one by one in the melted white chocolate and placed the balls on a parchment paper. I placed the chocolate-coated balls in the freezer for a half an hour.

And the result? First of all, the truffles were difficult to shape. When I processed the mixture with the electric mixer, it turned really thick and hard. Secondly, the taste of cocoa butter was overpowering. Not a satisfying experience!

In my next experiment, I left out the pumpkin puree and decided to use only pumpkin pie spice. Instead of coconut cream, I used butter. I also added 2/3 cup (160 ml) chopped pecans for crunch and taste.

Well, the result was bland as white paper. I missed the pumpkin puree — not only for the taste but also for the color. And the taste of cocoa butter was overpowering yet again. Sigh.

I did a couple more experiments, but as I wasn’t satisfied with those, either, I quit trying for a year. And I was running out of pumpkin, too. Don’t laugh, but they don’t sell canned pumpkin here in Finland. Nope. We are not a pumpkin country (though I’m a very much of a pumpkin person! I adore everything pumpkin). So in Finland we don’t have pumpkin pies, pumpkin spice muffins, pumpkin custard, pumpkin cheesecake, and definitely no PSL (actually, now that I think of it, I saw Starbucks in Helsinki selling PSL last year, so pumpkin is slowly coming to Finland—finally! Except I don’t think theirs contains any real pumpkin, and it’s very sugary. By the way, here is my sugar-free PSL version). And the stores didn’t sell pumpkin anymore, since the (short) season was over. So, there was no way to get pumpkin, except by ordering cans from abroad.

But this fall, I remembered my Pumpkin White Chocolate Truffle experiments and wanted to give them another try. This time, I had sugar-free white chocolate. KZ Clean Eating white chocolate was heavenly and very sweet — you don’t have to add any additional sweetener if you use it for cooking or baking. I had also done dairy-free white chocolate experiments for my Low-Sugar, So Simple book in which I finally managed to develop a really good recipe for (truly!) sugar-free white chocolate. That had been on my to-do list for years. And I was sure that sugar-free white chocolate would beat the cocoa butter in the recipe with flying colors.

For my first experiment I planned to make a ganache with sugar-free white chocolate and heavy cream. To the ganache base, I added pumpkin puree, pumpkin pie spice, and vanilla stevia. I let the mixture set in the fridge for three hours.

So far so good—except the mixture didn’t set! It was thick, but not so thick that I could have formed it into balls. I was wondering if it’d get thicker and fluffier if I beat it with an electric mixer — like I did during my experiments a year ago.

I grabbed my handheld mixer and started beating. No, the mixture didn’t get thick and fluffy. Instead, it separated! I had to throw it away. What a pity.

For my next experiment, I reduced the amount of heavy cream by half. Maybe the mixture was too runny with all that cream and pumpkin puree? I was hoping that reducing the heavy cream would help the mixture thicken in the fridge so that I could form balls from it. Plus, the previous experiment was far too sweet, thanks to the added vanilla stevia. The white chocolate really provides all the sweetness, so adding any extra sweetener was completely unnecessary.

Well, reducing the cream didn’t help. The mixture was too soft, even when I let it set overnight in the fridge. At least this time I was wise enough not to beat it with the electric mixer…

Anyway, I was still trying to figure out how to make it work. I failed last year, and now it looked like I was going to fail this year, too.

But wait: Maybe I could replace the heavy cream with something. Many truffle recipes contain butter, so maybe I could replace the heavy cream with butter! Could that work?

Now I took 4 oz (115 g) sugar-free white chocolate, 2 tablespoons salted butter (salted butter for a decadent flavor! Chocolate recipes ALWAYS need a pinch of salt!), 1/4 cup (60 ml) pumpkin puree, 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice, and 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract. (I wanted to use 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice but I put one whole teaspoon by accident. That didn’t matter: the result was nicely spicy!)

I was dying to find out if this version would work, so I melted everything in the microwave oven: first for 1 minute on high, then mixing; then 30 seconds on high. The mixture was smooth.

I let the mixture set in the fridge for two and a half hours. Excitedly, I took a spoonful of the mixture. It was just perfect! It was thick enough that I could form balls from it, but not so thick that it would have been difficult to shape. And thanks to the butter, the mixture didn’t get stuck to my hands when I was shaping it.

I placed the balls in the freezer overnight and the next day I coated them with melted sugar-free white chocolate. Both the taste and the mouthfeel were just perfect! I was so happy I’d finally succeeded in developing the ultimate Pumpkin White Chocolate Truffle recipe!

Here it is. Enjoy!