Simple Lemon Truffles Recipe

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Chocolate truffles are the perfect bite-sized, indulgent treat. Made from a ganache of cream, butter, and melted chocolate, these tiny and elegant confections have a velvety texture that melts in your mouth. Classic chocolate truffles are a perfectly lovely thing, but the beauty of truffles is that they are relatively easy to make and can take on any number of flavors. Recipe developer Julie Kinnaird shares her method for making these sweet and simple lemon truffles with rich white chocolate and fragrant Meyer lemons. The bright lemon flavor is a perfect foil to the creamy white chocolate ganache. The truffles are rolled in a sparkly coating of lemon sugar, easily made in a food processor with granulated sugar, yellow sanding sugar, and some of the Meyer lemon zest.

You can prepare several steps of this recipe in advance, which adds to the ease of preparation: The white chocolate ganache can be made and chilled several days before you form the truffles. In fact, the truffles themselves can be frozen in an air-tight container for several months. The finished truffles will also keep well under refrigeration for up to a week. Kinnaird says that these simple, zesty truffles also make a great gift and can be dressed up with paper casings and presented in a nice candy box.

The most important ingredient for this recipe is a good-quality white chocolate, with no less than 20% cocoa butter. The white chocolate will give the silky mouthfeel and rich flavor to the truffles. Kinnaird likes the Swiss Lindt brand. To contrast this richness of the white chocolate, you will use both the juice and zest of Meyer lemons. This variety has a distinctive, floral, and bright lemon flavor that is particularly nice in desserts. You will also need unsalted butter, heavy cream, and a bit of salt for making the ganache. You will create a lemon sugar with some of the Meyer lemon zest, granulated sugar, and yellow sanding sugar for color. This aromatic mixture will be used to coat the rolled truffles.

Place the white chocolate in a large heat-proof bowl.

Combine the butter and cream in a small heavy saucepan over medium heat.

Bring the butter and cream to a boil.

Pour the mixture over the white chocolate.

Let the mixture sit for 5 minutes.

Whisk in the lemon juice, zest, and salt until smooth. Keep whisking until the mixture is glossy.

Chill the white chocolate ganache mixture until firm (about 3 hours).

While the ganache is chilling, carefully remove the outer yellow zest from the lemon in thin layers, making sure to avoid having too much white pith attached.

Add the zest pieces to the food processor along with the granulated and sanding sugars.

Process the mixture until there are no large pieces of the zest left.

Transfer the lemon sugar to a shallow bowl and set aside.

Use a 1 ¼-inch cookie scoop or spoon to scoop balls of the chilled ganache onto a plate.

Use your hands to roll the balls smooth. If they become too soft, place the plate in a refrigerator until firm enough to handle.

Once the truffles are rolled, chill them for 30 minutes.

Roll the truffles in the lemon sugar to evenly coat. Keep chilled until ready to serve.

Serve the truffles in papers, if desired.

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Meyer lemons are distinguished from regular lemons by their deep gold color and round shape. These sweet lemons are a cross between a traditional lemon variety and a mandarin orange. The resulting lemon has a mild and less astringent flavor than the traditional tart taste of a standard lemon. Meyer lemons still have a lot of brightness and acidity, but taste sweeter and more floral than other varieties. These qualities make them well-suited for desserts or preparations that need a less tart, more subtle flavor. Meyer lemons are most commonly found in markets starting in late fall and into early spring.

You can substitute a variety of conventional lemons (such as a Eureka or Lisbon variety) in this recipe, but take care when procuring the zest. Meyer lemon peels are thinner and have less bitter white pith beneath than conventional lemons. When removing the zest from a conventional lemon, be sure that there's not a layer of the pith attached, or your truffles will have a bitter taste. With any lemon variety, it is important to wash the fruit before zesting to remove any wax or impurities that can affect the quality of your product.

White baking chips certainly have their place in dessert creation, from mixing them into cookies or brownies to making hot white chocolate or fudge, but white baking chips are not the same as white chocolate and shouldn't be used interchangeably. Pure white chocolate is made from cocoa butter, milk, sugar, and vanilla. If you see "filler" ingredients on a label for white chocolate, such as lecithin, oils, or artificial flavorings, you can assume that they are there to mask the taste of low-quality cocoa butter. And if there is no cocoa butter listed, it isn't real white chocolate.

White baking chips are made with fillers in order to help them keep their chip shape intact during baking. Often, white baking chips don't contain cocoa butter at all. That is why they are labeled as "baking chips" or "white morsels" rather than white chocolate. White candy melts are different from white chocolate, as well. White chips and melts tend to have a pure white color, whereas true white chocolate has more of a yellowish cast due to the cocoa butter.

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