Give Them Your Heart!

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by Hannah (BitterSweet)

Even if you’re more cynical about the upcoming “holiday” or have no sweetheart to dote upon, Valentine’s Day is, at the very least, an excellent excuse to eat chocolate. Store-bought delights abound at this time of year, even for those avoiding dairy, but a homemade option will almost always trump the ready-made, in both taste and ingredients. Basic truffles can be whipped up in no time at all, giving them the added bonus of being a fantastic last-minute gift as well.

For me, however, I would much rather a bit more than just a nugget of intense, rich, and almost overwhelming chocolate- As decadent as they are, I must admit that I find them a bit… boring. Where’s the spice, the zest, the excitement? That’s why I immediately thought to revisit my chocolate cherry truffles from My Sweet Vegan. Composed primarily of fruit and cocoa, they’re actually a lesser evil when it comes to sweet confections!

A happy accident led me to use sweetened cranberries instead of cherries (I swear the bags looked exactly the same!), and going with the flow, I threw in a teaspoon of lemon zest as well. Rolling the slab of enriched fruit out between two silpats to a thickness of about 1/2 inch, a very small heart-shaped cookie cutter created a much more festive presentation than the standard hand-rolled spheres. After a quick dip into melted chocolate, I had a very sweet Valentine’s gift, indeed.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at the situation, these hearts were meant to be broken.

42 thoughts on “Give Them Your Heart!”

  3. Hannah, these are perfect! The cranberries is a fabulous addition!

    Very Happy Birthday to your wonderful blog and many more years of happy blogging to come!

  8. These look so beautiful! Cherry ond chocolate is the most amazing flavour combination I can think of. Ok, cranberries are nice, too :D

  10. Oh woow, those look delicious! How did I not think of that?))) I make similar chocolates, only I use cake scraps together with dried fruits :) I love them all :D

  17. These look great! I too, have an accidental package of sweetened dried cranberries in my pantry!! So, essentially the centers of these are just cranberries and lemon zest?

  18. Perfect – just perfect! And as I think you can sometimes have too much of good thing, the inclusion of cranberries/cherries amongst the dark chocolate sounds really nice!

  26. BRING ON THE CHOCOLATE!!!! I made some Raw vegan chocolates months ago in preparation for the upcoming Valentine holiday – haha, who am I kidding?? I’m always looking for an excuse to make chocolate and have them on standby in my freezer!

    Cheers!
    Kristen

  29. Oh my, how do you always take such professional photos!? Those truffles are so up my mum’s ali, I’ll certainly give the recipe a try this valentines day! (By the way, your cookbook helped my accomplish my ED because I didn’t want to keep making desserts that were to unsweetened, bitter, dry or flat! ;)

  32. Oh these look so delicious! I’ll be getting up to some of my own hearth shaped baking this weekend, I hope it looks as good as yours!

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