The celestial combination of chocolate and hazelnut is known worldwide — unfortunately, the most well-known product is a spread made from deplorable ingredients (you certainly know which product I mean!). Luckily, it’s very easy to make healthier options that still taste heavenly and do good for you. This simple keto truffle recipe is dairy-free, and the taste of these mouthwatering truffles is rich and chocolaty, with a notable hint of hazelnut. They are simply to die for!
How to make these 5-Ingredient Dairy-Free Keto Chocolate and Hazelnut Truffles
Usually, truffles use butter (well, some use cream cheese, but I don’t consider those creations truffles. In my opinion, sour-flavored cream cheese has nothing to do with truffles; the base for the truffles has to be neutral-tasting, or at least not sour!). However, this truffle recipe is entirely dairy-free and vegan. The recipe uses extra-virgin coconut oil as a base. It’s pretty neutral tasting and certainly not sour.
The ultimate chocolate and hazelnut flavor is created by combining hazelnut butter made from roasted hazelnuts and raw cacao powder. Powdered erythritol is a perfect sweetener that dissolves in seconds in the truffle mass.
Making truffles with butter is very easy as you just beat all ingredients until fluffy, let cool, and shape into balls. However, when using coconut oil, it’s best to melt the coconut oil and then mix with other ingredients, let cool, beat until fluffy, and let cool again until you can shape the truffle mass into balls. Well, this is not as complicated as it sounds. Let’s take a look at how to prepare these beyond-belief tasty keto truffles:
Take a small thick-bottomed saucepan. Add 1/2 cup (120 ml; about 4 oz = 115 g) coconut oil…
…and 1/4 cup (60 ml; about 2 oz = 60 g) 100% hazelnut butter.
Heat over very low heat, all the time mixing…
…until the coconut oil is completely melted. Don’t let boil.
Remove from the heat. Add 1/4 cup (60 ml; 1 oz = 30 g) cacao powder…
…1/4 cup (60 ml; 1 oz = 30 g) powdered erythritol…
…and 2 tablespoons coconut milk.
Stir…
…until well combined.
Let the mixture cool down to room temperature or a bit lower, until it starts to solidify. However, don’t let solidify completely, just become a little stiff, like this.
Beat the mixture with an electric mixer until fluffy. If you cannot make it fluffy, chill the mixture a bit more and try again to beat until fluffy.
Like this.
Chill the mixture again until you can shape it into balls. Once very stiff, shape into walnut-sized balls. It’s best to use gloves as the truffle mass can be a bit sticky.
Roll the balls in raw cacao powder.
Looks good.
Place on a parchment paper-lined plate.
Serve immediately or a bit chilled. Store up to one week in the fridge.
Yum!
How I came up with this easy dairy-free keto truffle recipe
The idea for these dairy-free truffles originates from my plans to make a truffle recipe for a Finnish well-being magazine called Minä Olen (“I am”). I know most of the readers are vegetarians or vegans, so a regular truffle recipe with butter was out of the question. So, I started ideating a perfect dairy-free option to replace butter.
At first, I was thinking of coconut manna, i.e., coconut butter, but thought it might be too stiff and it won’t hold the truffles well together as it’s pretty crumbly. Soon, I realized coconut oil might be worth experimenting with. However, coconut oil becomes really stiff and too hard when refrigerated. And at room temperature, it might get too soft or even liquid.
Therefore, I thought I’d add coconut milk to soften the coconut oil so that I can store the truffles refrigerated without them becoming too hard.
Now, I had coconut oil and coconut milk as a base. As I decided to make chocolate truffles, I decided to use raw cacao powder for the chocolate taste. And since orange is such a perfect flavor to accompany chocolate, I wanted to add some freshly grated orange peel to the truffles.
Powdered erythritol was the most evident sweetener to sweeten the truffles. It dissolves well in cold desserts and provides pretty neutral sweetness without too much aftertaste.
I did my first experiment and combined all ingredients in a saucepan. I heated the ingredients until the coconut oil was melted. However, the mixture separated! Oh no! I was very disappointed. What now?
I wondered what would happen if I first melted the coconut oil and then added the rest of the ingredients? That might solve the separation issue. Anyway, I was able to rescue the separated mixture when I let it cool down and beat it with an electric mixer until fluffy. I was actually very positively surprised that the mixture became that fluffy even without butter and just with coconut oil. Marvelous! What a perfect truffle mass!
It was effortless to shape the fluffy mixture into balls. I rolled the balls in raw cacao powder, and they made beautiful truffles.
Later, I made a modification of the recipe for our Ketokamu advent calendar. I omitted orange peel and used our Ketolla nut and chocolate spread instead. This time, I heated coconut oil and Ketolla first and then added the rest of the ingredients. Now, there was no any kind of separation, but the mixture was smooth and homogenous. Moreover, it was unbelievably tasty!
After letting the mixture cool down and beating it until fluffy, I shaped it into balls and rolled the balls in raw cacao powder. The result was really delicious, and our Ketokamu followers loved the recipe.
I thought the advent calendar recipe might work perfectly also with plain nut butter. Since the hazelnut and chocolate combo is a match made in heaven, I decided to try out how the recipe works if I switched our Ketolla to 100% hazelnut butter.
The chocolate and hazelnut version worked wonderfully, as you can see in this blog post. You can enjoy the celestial flavor combination of chocolate and hazelnut in a healthy way — without sugar, without dairy, and without unhealthy and unnatural fats. So perfect!
Here’s the recipe for you to enjoy:
5-Ingredient Dairy-Free Keto Chocolate and Hazelnut Truffles
The celestial combination of chocolate and hazelnut is known worldwide — unfortunately, the most well-known product is a spread made from deplorable ingredients (you certainly know which product I mean!). Luckily, it’s very easy to make healthier options that still taste heavenly and do good for you. This simple keto truffle recipe is dairy-free, and the taste of these mouthwatering truffles is rich and chocolaty, with a notable hint of hazelnut. They are simply to die for!
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup = 120 ml extra-virgin coconut oil
- 1/4 cup = 60 ml 100% hazelnut butter
- 1/4 cup = 60 ml raw cacao powder + more (about 1/2 cup = 120 ml) for dusting
- 1/4 cup = 60 ml powdered erythritol
- 2 tablespoons coconut milk
Instructions
1. Combine the coconut oil and the hazelnut butter in a thick-bottomed saucepan.
2. Heat over very low heat, all the time mixing, until the coconut oil is completely melted.
3. Remove from the heat. Add 1/4 cup (60 ml) cacao powder, sweetener, and the coconut milk. Stir until well combined.
4. Let the mixture cool down to room temperature or a bit lower, until it starts to solidify. However, don't let solidify completely, just become a little stiff.
5. Beat the mixture with an electric mixer until fluffy. If you cannot make it fluffy, chill the mixture a bit more and try again to beat until fluffy.
6. Chill the mixture again until you can shape it into balls.
7. Once very stiff, shape into walnut-sized balls.
8. Roll the balls in cocoa powder. Place on a parchment paper-covered plate.
9. Serve immediately or store up to one week in the fridge.
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Nutrition information | In total | Per truffle if 16 truffles altogether |
Protein | 14.9 g | 0.9 g |
Fat | 157.0 g | 9.8 g |
Net carbs | 6.4 g | 0.4 g |
kcal | 1513 kcal | 95 kcal |
Tips for variations
I know many of you are dying to ask whether the recipe works with peanut butter instead of hazelnut butter. My answer will make you happy: yes, it works! Also, other nut butters, seed butters, and almond butter are perfect. Nut butter made from roasted nuts makes more delicious truffles, so go for roasted nut butter if you can.
Feel free to add vanilla extract or powder to the truffle mass; it works like the icing on the cake, lending a mouthwatering vanilla note.
Even the combination of chocolate and hazelnut is perfect as is (well, at maximum, some vanilla added), you can certainly add other flavorings to these truffles. My recommendations are orange flavoring, almond flavoring, coconut flavoring, and raspberry flavoring. Even cherry flavoring might create a fascinating twist.
If you want to have crunch in your truffles, add chopped roasted hazelnuts to the fluffy mixture before chilling it and shaping it into balls. Another fascinating way to add crunch is to “hide” a whole roasted hazelnut in the middle of the truffle while shaping the balls.
Instead of raw cacao powder, you can coat the truffles with melted extra-dark chocolate. For this, it’s best to freeze the uncoated truffle balls so that they don’t melt when you dip them in the melted chocolate. The melted chocolate also solidifies in seconds on the frozen surface of the truffle.
General prattling
Hope you are having a delicious and relaxing holiday. I certainly have enjoyed lots of tasty keto holiday food, but I have kept myself busy with Christmas preparations as well. Since my son wanted to celebrate Christmas at home, I baked the Christmas ham, cooked mustard, baked Christmas bread, keto gingerbread house, and Yule Log, among others.
The gingerbread house was — as far as I remember — the first ever keto gingerbread house I have made. Well, at least it was the first-ever time when I used my keto baking mix to make a gingerbread house and our Ketokamu sweetener to make the icing. I have to admit attaching the parts together and decorating the house was really challenging, but the result was first of all super yummy, and the looks turned out okay. Well, now that I know the tricks, I will make an even better keto gingerbread house next year!
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