Originally posted in June, 2022
Repost November 2022 to gear up for Christmas baking!
If you follow me on Instagram,
you might have seen that I whipped up some quick truffles last week for
a mini family reunion we were hosting at our home this weekend.
I'm a big fan of the actual Mother's brand Circus Animal Cookies
(Frosted Animal Crackers) and could eat an entire bag myself, easily.
When I initially decided I wanted to make truffles instead of my typical
chocolate chip cookies, I first figured I'd just make the regular
almond truffles I know everyone loves, but then thought maybe instead, I
should do the Oreo version as well to mix it up a bit. But... meh.
When it comes to quick and easy cookie truffles, a regular 'go to' is
the Oreo version but it's just as simple to make them with 'Nilla
Wafers, animal crackers or obviously - frosted animal crackers like the
original (and best version, in my opinion) Circus Animals.
It's basically just pulverizing the cookie, adding enough frosting or cream cheese to hold it together, forming balls and dipping in candy coating.
And... that's what you do!
Frosted Animal Cracker Truffles
Frosted Animal Crackers (like Mother's Brand Circus Animals) (9 oz)
Cream Cheese or white or pink frosting (2 oz)
Pink candy coating (1 small pkg)
White candy coating (1 small pkg)
Muli-colored sprinkles
To each 9 oz. bag of animal cookies you'll want to use about 2 ounces of either frosting or cream cheese. The amount you make is up to you. I used 2 bags of Circus Animal Cookies and about 6-ish ounces cream cheese.
Separate
the pink and white cookies from each bag you are using. Pulverize the
white cookies in a food processor and add about 2-3 ounces white
frosting or cream cheese and pulse just until it forms a ball. Repeat
with the pink. If your dough is a bit too sticky to work with, chill in
the refrigerator for 30 minutes until you can form balls. The sprinkles
in the white tend to turn it a pale 'green' tint.
Using about
1/2 teaspoon, scoop out little bits and roll in tiny balls, both pink
and white, placing on parchment paper lined trays. Freeze for about 20
minutes, and then use a white ball to smash a little and form it around a
pink ball and place back on parchment. Repeat until you've used about
half of them and then reverse the process and smoosh a pink one to form
around a white center. If you want skip this step and do single color
bites, (faster) just form 3/4" balls out of the white and pink cookie
dough as you wish.
Freeze your balls for about 30 minutes. Prepare your candy melts by following directions on the packages. Use a bowl for white and a bowl for pink (separate). Usually this means microwaving on defrost or 50% power for 1 minute at a time and stirring and mashing between minutes until smooth and melted.
Dip half the balls pink and half white. Be sure to sprinkle with multi-colored candy sprinkles immediately while they are wet because as they are frozen, they set up very, very quickly.
At the very end you can use the remaining melts to splatter and drizzle across and over the truffles.
You can keep these in the refrigerator for a week easily. Mine were also out on the counter for 2-3 days, no problem.
Some
are multi color centered (right) and when I ran out of white dough but
still had more pink, I did the rest solid pink. Each are dipped in the
opposite color candy coating.
