Chocolate Truffle Tips: 9 Hacks to Make the Best Truffles

These nine chocolate truffle tips will help you make the best truffles, no matter what kind you choose. Some links in this post are affiliate links that earn me a commission if you purchase through them.

I love making truffles. It’s one of those desserts that always wow people, so don’t tell them that they aren’t really that hard to make.

While the last few years I’ve focused on doing edible cookie dough truffles, the same philosophy holds true for those and for traditional truffles.

Truffles make a fantastic gift if you place them in a pretty little gift box or even in a mason jar with a cute ribbon. They’re perfect for a cookie exchange or any party you plan to attend.

Yes, I have in fact given boxes of these as teacher gifts in years past, and teachers always thank me for them. And of course, they’re fun to have on hand for the “oops I need something” time we all have.

Truffle recipes tend to make a not insignificant number, and they can be time consuming to make. You want to make them as quickly as possible, and you want your effort to turn into gorgeous truffles, too.

That’s where I came up with these nine pro truffle making tips. These will save you time and help you make better truffles.

So what are you waiting for? Go melt some chocolate!

Need a good truffle recipe? Check out my favorites at the bottom of this article!

Nine Tips and Tricks to Making Truffles Look and Taste Amazing

Prep your ingredients:

Some truffle recipes call for cream cheese or butter. Those recipes don’t work if you don’t prep your ingredients ahead of time – just like making cookies with cold butter doesn’t turn out as well.

For example, my brownie batter truffles need the cream cheese completely softened. I came up with a little trick that helped when I forgot to take out the cream cheese.

I actually heated a portion of it with my butter to get it even softer so that it incorporates well into the dough for the brownie batter truffles. If you have it cold, it will simply make chunks and won’t distribute.

Alternatively, you can very gently warm it up to soften it and even melt it just a little. The trick is to soften it without cooking it because cooking it will ruin your truffles.

Keep your chocolate warm:

When you dip your truffles in the melted chocolate, make sure that it stays warm. I use a cast iron pan, which holds heat beautifully.

Even so, I’ll dip about 8 or 10 truffles and then reheat my chocolate just a touch so that it is as thin as possible. This helps ensure that you don’t get thick globs of extra chocolate on your truffle that don’t leave that smooth surface you’re looking for.

Use the right tools for dipping:

When dipping your truffles into the chocolate, use a fork if you don’t own a dipping tool. This allows you to securely hold your truffle when you pick it up after dipping it.

I used a fork for years, but I finally invested in chocolate tools, and I wish I’d done so years earlier. This five piece set costs about $15, but the energy and sanity it saves me are priceless.

If you use a fork, there’s a little trick: Use a second fork to push your truffle off your first fork. Turn the fork “upside down” so that you can use as little of the fork tines as possible to carefully push the truffle off the first fork.

This keeps as much of the chocolate on your truffle as possible while keeping the process running smoothly. I used to try to almost shake the truffle off the fork onto a silpat to harden, but too often it would roll or would take awhile before releasing from the fork. This is a much faster and easier method.

Be patient:

Once you dip, allow all the excess chocolate to fall off the truffle and back into your chocolate bowl when you shake it, again helping to ensure you have a smooth truffle the looks as good as it tastes.

If you dip the truffle then immediately set it back down to harden, the excess chocolate pools around your truffle and doesn’t look as pretty. Beyond that, you need more chocolate to get all your truffles dipped, and that costs more money.

Don’t skimp on your chocolate:

If you make chocolate chip cookies, go ahead and use the basic chocolate chips from the grocery store. If you plan to make truffles, you need quality chocolate.

Not only will the truffles taste better because you use good chocolate, but a quality chocolate melts nicely. It doesn’t get thick or clumpy, which helps make your dipping that much easier.

Prep your chocolate ahead of time:

Personally, I prefer to use a chocolate bar and chop it when I need to. If you prefer, you can use callets – a fancy name for chips.

If you use a bar, you can’t just dump a chunk into your pot to melt. Chocolate is delicate. It has a fairly low melting point, but it also burns at a fairly low temperature.

Scorched chocolate is no bueno. Let’s just avoid that issue entirely.

To help your chocolate melt evenly and more smoothly while reducing the risk of scorching it, chop your chocolate before heating it. The smaller pieces and greater surface area allow it to melt more quickly.

How to save seized chocolate:

If you run into any issues with your chocolate seizing (because water got in from your double boiler) or overheating, you can potentially save it.

If it’s overheated, try stirring in some unmelted chocolate to help regain its texture. If that doesn’t work or if it has seized, add just a teaspoon of vegetable oil and stir it in.

This will help regain the texture you’re looking for, but be careful with how you melt your chocolate to avoid these issues at all.

Use extra chocolate to make decorate your truffles:

If you have extra chocolate once you have finished your truffles, chill your truffles, then reheat your chocolate. This time, you want to use a fork or a drizzling scoop.

Generally, I use a fork because it’s easiest to clean later. Dip the fork into the chocolate and wave it over your truffles to create pretty lines of chocolate over them.

This extra layer of thin lines for decoration makes them look that much more professional. Be sure to chill again to harden the chocolate before removing from your tray and serving.

Use extra chocolate to make chocolate bark

Regardless of how many truffles you make, you want to melt enough chocolate that you still dip the very last truffle. If you skimp and have to scrape the bottom to get those last few truffles, they don’t look as professional.

Instead, melt extra chocolate. Make an extra large batch of truffles, but even then you’ll have extra chocolate.

Rather than letting it harden and reusing it later, I simple make another quick dessert. I’ll make a chocolate bark with the leftover chocolate.

Over the holidays, I like to make a peppermint bark, but throughout the year I’ll make s’mores bark or an antioxidant bark or any number of fun chocolates.