Teacher Gifts 2010

I had to make nine teacher gifts this year and I made coffee flavored truffles and red velvet Whoopie Pies.

First up, the truffles. I used a recipe from the Maxwell House Coffee Cookbook, which is an excellent cookbook if you love coffee and sweets.

8 squares (8 oz.) semi-sweet chocolate
1/3 cup sweetened condensed milk
1/4 cup brewed double strength coffee
1/2 cup finely chopped nuts
1 tsp. vanilla extract
Gen. Foods International Coffee Cafe Vienna (dry) for garnish

Line a square 8x8 baking pan with foil.
Microwave the chocolate, condensed milk and coffee in a large bowl on high for 2 minutes, stirring halfway through the heating time.
Stir until the chocolate is completely melted.
Stir in nuts and vanilla. Pour into the baking pan.
Chill for 2 hours or until chocolate is firm enough to handle.
Cut into squares and roll into 1" balls. They don't have to be perfectly round a la Martha Stewart.
Store covered in refrigerator until time to serve.
Just before serving, dip tops in GFIC powder and place truffles in mini cupcake liners.

Next up is Red Velvet Whoopie Pies. This is NOT a good recipe for your kids to help you with as it is MESSY and the red dye might set them off behavior wise if they ate too much. I recommend wearing food service gloves while you are filling and piping the batter onto the pans. This recipe makes a huge batch of pies and next time I will double the recipe for the filling. Click the link above to see the recipe.

Once the goodies were ready, I lined these cute Chinese take out boxes I got at Dollar Tree with wax paper and put the truffles on the bottom and mini pies on top, separated by wax paper squares. I thought they turned out cute!

The teachers gave the goodies a big thumbs up!