A Little Burns Night Treat

Okay, okay, so it isn't whisky.  But, it is Irn-Bru truffles.  In my opinion, that is just as good. 

And what does an American girl know about Irn-Bru?  Admittedly, not much until last year.  But last spring, I went to see Black Watch in Seattle.  I had met most of the cast the previous fall in DC, and as a person who likes to make sweet treats and give them away, I decided the only thing to do would be to create a treat that incorporated a bit of "home" for the actors while they were away.  Cause I'm a total nerd like that.  Unfortunately, the internet seems to have a dearth of Irn-Bru recipes.  It just meant I got to experiment.  I ended up making some Irn-Bru fudge and Irn-Bru truffles.  I like these truffles and they have the benefit of being easy-peasy.

The recipe is:

1/8 cup of concentrated Irn-Bru
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) of butter, softened
2 1/8 cups of powdered sugar
Semi-sweet chocolate chips or white chocolate chips according to preference.

Told you it was going to be easy.

The first step is finding some Irn-Bru.  Depending on your location, that may be tricky.  I ended up buying some on Amazon.

 

 

 

 

 

Mini Macca checking out the selections on Amazon.

The next step is boiling down the Irn-Bru.  I generally do one cup boiled down to somewhere between 1/4 cup or 1/8 of a cup.  It all depends on how syrupy concentrated you want it.  Just make sure it doesn't all boil away!  I believe, looking at these pictures, I was doing a double batch (so really, just double everything and there you have it).

Getting ready to be boiled.

Boiling away!

Then I will let it sit for a bit to cool down.  This is when you can gather your other ingredients and get that butter softened.

All the ingredients you need.

In a medium sized bowl, or a stand mixer.  Put in the butter, 1/2 of the powdered sugar, and the Irn-Bru concentrate. Mix together with either a hand-held mixer or a stand mixer on medium.

Almost all of the ingredients.

Once those ingredients are fully mixed, then add in the rest of the powdered sugar.  If it becomes too heavy, add in a tiny bit of Irn-Bru straight from the bottle (if you hadn't already drunk the remaining half of the bottle) until it is thick but creamy.  This is what you should end up with:

Delicious Irn-Bru goodness.

At this point, you can either pop it just like that into the refrigerator for a few hours, or do as I do, and roll them into balls before putting them in the refrigerator.  To do that, the easiest thing I have found is to take a cookie sheet and cover it with wax paper.  Then taking my smallest cookie scoop, I scoop them into balls and put them on the cookie sheet.  That just makes it easier to roll them into neater balls when the time comes.

After they have hardened, I take them out of the fridge, roll them into their neater balls, and prepare to dunk them in chocolate.  I generally toss about half a bag of chocolate chips into a bowl with a spoonful of all-purpose shortening.  Then I put that into my microwave for 30 seconds.  Mix it up, put it in for another 30 seconds, mix again.  By that point, the chocolate chips should be all mixed and you should be ready to dip the Irn-Bru balls into the chocolate.  I like to use the two fork method.  Once all of them have received their chocolate bath, I decorate them with some form of sprinkle on top and put them back in the fridge to harden.  

The finished truffle.

Then I eat them. Yum!  My friends here in the states say they have an unidentifiable flavour, but are more than happy to eat them up.  I hope you enjoy making some of your own.

Happy Burns Night!