Nut Butter and Oat Truffles

Have you bought a jar of nut butter and find you don't really like it spread on bread? Here is a much nicer way of using such a product.

 Locally made hazelnut paste.

Ingredients for truffles:
1.5 cups of rolled oats
½ cup nut butter (I used Berrinoise hazelnut praline butter)
¼ cup honey (I used local chestnut honey)
1 tsp vanilla extract (I used vanilla from Réunion)
¼ cup cocoa nibs (a product I bought when they were trendy and have never previously found a use for. You could substitute very small chocolate chips.)

 Local honey.

Ingredients for Coating:
¼ cup ground almonds or hazelnuts
1 tbsp icing sugar
Pinch ground cinnamon
Pinch salt

Method:

1. Carefully brown the ground almonds or hazelnuts in a pan. 
2. Combine the ingredients for the coating.
3. Put the rolled oats in a food processor and pulse a bit.
4. Combine the nut butter, honey and vanilla.
5. Add the rolled oats and cocoa nibs to the nut butter mix.
6. Stir until combined and forming a paste.
7. Make about 30 small balls from the paste.
8. Roll the balls in the coating once and then repeat the process.
9. Arrange in a single layer and refrigerate or freeze.

The truffles ready to be coated.

If you live around the Preuilly area you can buy the hazelnut butter and honey from Sylvain at La Croisée des Terroirs, our specialist local products grocer. 

The finished hazelnut truffles, coated in almond sugar.

Yum

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Tuesday's Training Tales (see here)

Last week there was no swimming at all, and three days work away from home interrupted training, but we still managed 33km of walking, most of it at about 6km/hour, even when we weren't trying really hard. Some of the morning walks have been a lot cooler, which may account for the higher speed.