Coconut Truffles

Remember this pin?

Remember how irritated you were when you clicked on the link and it took you to Flickr.com and it was just a picture, no instructions? 

For all you coconut lovers, out there, I've solved your problem. 

I looked around to find a recipe that I thought would be yummy and ended up combining a couple, here and here. You'll want to use medium shredded coconut (1 step up from finely shredded). Or you can decide what look you're going for and choose a coconut from there. 

Ingredients:

8 oz. plain cream cheese

1/2 c. CASTOR sugar (powdered sugar (suggested ingredient) is gross! ew) (but i SUPPOSE you could use whatever you like/have on hand)

4 c shredded coconut (if using unsweetened, increase the amount of sugar)

8 oz. white chocolate (block, NOT CHIPS!!)(You'll find out why below)

Method:

Cream your cream cheese (ironic, i know) using either a stand or hand mixer. Mix in the sugar and 2 cups of the coconut. Form small (about 1/2 inch) balls, place on a cookie sheet lined in parchment paper, and put them in the freezer for at least 20 minutes. I left mine to the next day and they were fine. 

Ok, so here's the tricky part. Tempering your chocolate. I wanted the chocolate coating on my candies to snap, so they wouldn't be all squishy. The first time I attempted these, I didn't know anything about tempering chocolate and so every single ball was a squishy mess. Turns out, tempering chocolate isn't so hard, just a bit tricky to get the hang of. You can read all about it here (this is where you learn why you  need a block of chocolate and not the chips).

So, basically, follow the directions from the link above (she explains it better than I could) to get your melted chocolate. Or if you don't care if your candies are squishy (you probably will; just sayin) you can melt the chocolate however you would like. Then dip each ball in the chocolate, using a fork to drain off the excess (as pictured below). 

Drop your chocolate covered ball into a bowl of plain coconut. I used a different fork in the coconut bowl so I didn't get flakes in my chocolate. 

Place back on your baking sheet and allow them to dry. As you can see, I got better and better with my method as I progressed (the first ones are at the bottom of the picture). I also started using smaller coconut flakes and they look waay better.

I don't have any pretty pictures of them :( and they got consumed much too quickly (thank you, work peeps)