Sunday 17 April 2022
Black Widow Spider Truffles
What's more appetising, I ask you, than biting into a huge fat venomous spider? And which deadly spider is more instantly familiar than our cannibalistic friend the black widow? God they're creepy aren't they. Even looking at this photo below gives me the creepy crawlies. Anyway, I long thought it would be a fun idea to make chocolate truffles decorated to look like spiders. They'd make a nice addition to a spooky afternoon tea, a Halloween party, a children's party, or just whenever you feel like baking spooky sweets.
This was fairly time consuming, but the hardest part was tracing around the spider stencils and cutting them out. If you're more artistically talented than I, you might want to draw spider shapes straight onto the black card instead of printing out an image. This recipe yielded enough for about 10 of my fairly large ones, but you can make them any size you like.
Ingredients:
100g unsalted butter
100g dark chocolate
1tsp cocoa
1 cup icing sugar +
Cherries (morello, glacรฉ, etc.)
Rum, rum essence, or vanilla essence
Black fondant
Red fondant
For spider bases:
Black card stock (fairly stiff, not paper)
Cardboard
Glue
Pencil
Scissors
Bases Method:
Print out the image at the bottom of this post.
Glue image into cardboard.
Cut around the image carefully to create a stencil.
Hold the stencil onto the black card stock and (this part is particularly fiddly) trace around it with a pencil.
Cut out your spiders! Arrange them on a plate or pretty tray.
Truffle Method:
In a pot, melt together the butter and chocolate on the stove, slowly stirring til combined.
Add half a cup of icing sugar, the cocoa, and the rum or vanilla essence. Stir, then add more icing sugar until the mixture is stiff and firm. 1 cup of icing sugar wasn't enough, so I added another half a cup, and a bit more cocoa for luck.
Let cool til it's comfortable to handle.
Using the spider stencil as a guide for how large the truffle should be, roll some mixture into a rough ball.
Mush a cherry (or two) into it, then roll the mixture around in your hands until it's pleasingly round. Place on a plate, it doesn't matter if the bottom flattens.
Repeat for as many truffles as you want, then put them in the fridge to chill for a couple of hours.
Flatten out the black fondant as thinly as you can, you only want it a few millimetres thick.
Lay the fondant over each truffle, and roll it in your hands until the whole truffle is covered. It doesn't matter if the underside is bare or untidy.
Flatten out some red fondant, and using a sharp knife (xacto knife or non-serrated kitchen knife) carefully cut out hourglass shapes.
Gently place the red hourglasses onto each truffle and pat to smoothen them down so they'll stay in place but not lose their shape.
Put each truffle onto the black card spider base. Serve!