I’m really sad that we don’t have a photo of these, because they looked amazing. I wanted to make them last Christmas as a gift, but never got around to it. This year I knew we had a few spare days between finishing work and seeing people for Christmas, so I made sure they got made – and them gave them away as a gift. Not before I’d made sure I’d tried one though!
These bonbons are basically little truffles made from (mostly) Christmas pudding and chocolate, which you then decorate to make look like miniature Christmas Puddings. You do this by melting some white chocolate over the truffle, then adding green and red glace cherries to get a holly and berry effect.
Now, I don’t care what my myriad of recipe books say (this isn’t the first time I’ve tried to get hold of them), but green glace cherries do not exist in most major supermarkets. Perhaps they do in specialist cook shops, but I’m yet to find any. So, to get the holly leaf effect I cut up tiny strips of marzipan which I then coloured green. Green royal icing probably would have worked here too, or green jelly sweets (which you can usually find, but for some reason had gone on a hiatus for Christmas 2013).
The truffles tasted OK, but to be honest they were mostly like very rich Christmas Pudding with some chocolate added. Which is exactly what they were. I was mostly proud of these because of the way they looked – which is why I’m sad there’s no photo!
Who made them: Anna and Dan
Recipe: Nigella Christmas, pg. 246-248