Easy to make chocolate truffles recipe, made with digestive biscuits, condensed milk and cocoa powder. This is a no-cook digestive biscuits truffle recipe and perfect activity to make with children. These truffles are a bit different to a higher end version with cream and quality chocolate, but they are surprisingly delicious and make a perfect treat.
Why make this recipe
- Easy truffle recipe to make
- Budget friendly
- Keep for much longer than cream based truffles
- No need for an ‘actual chocolate’!
- No need for cooking/heating up the ingredients
The digestive biscuits truffle recipe history
Digestive biscuits truffles were chocolate treats popular in British schools home economics or cooking classes towards the mid to end 20 century.
There were cheaper versions of the grown-up chocolate truffles and were easy for children to make during the school class. I’m assuming that this recipe was developed after the second world war when real chocolate was still rationed, expensive and very difficult to come by.
While a lot of war time food and sweets rationing shopped after the end of the war a lot of food items continued to be rationed well until the 1950s. Chocolate was rationed until 5th of February 1953 and sugar until September 1953.
That is why this digestive biscuits truffle recipe originally uses only drinking chocolate as the only source of chocolate, and the sugar element comes from condensed milk.
Fresh cream, which is what chocolatiers use mostly to create chocolate truffles these days, was far too expensive and not everyone had a fridge to keep it in. Since digestive biscuits were invented around 1839 by two Scottish doctors, it’s likely that this school truffle recipe is originally Scottish too.
Ingredients and possible substitutions
Digestive biscuits
Digestive biscuits were invented to help to aid digestion, and they are probably a a little bit healthier than other types of biscuit. They would also be cheap to buy and easy to crumble into the recipe mix.
If you want to you can use any other kind of biscuits, that are not very sweet, for example shortbread biscuits.
Butter
I’m also guessing that the original recipe wouldn’t include butter, as it would add to the cost of the recipe. You can easily leave it out, if you like, just adjust the amount of the biscuits (you will need more than stated in the recipe or omit the desiccated coconut to even out the wet/dry ingredients).
Coconut
The desiccated coconut is also a later addition, making the recipe extra morish, but of course adding to the cost.
If you want to make this recipe on a budget, you only need three ingredients — tin of condensed milk, pack of digestive biscuits and a cocoa powder.
Cocoa powder
I would suggest using cocoa powder instead of the drinking chocolate powder (the original recipe has this, because of the cost). The cocoa powder will, of course, give you a stronger chocolate flavour, and these days it’s probably not more expensive than a good drinking cocoa powder.
Before you start making this chocolate truffle recipe, I have to warn you, that these school truffles are very sweet and totally addictive. Once you make them, you’ll know!
Quantity & Batch size
This recipe makes about 30-35 chocolate truffles, but the final amount depends on how big you want to make them. You can easily double the amount, if you are making some for a party or a school sale.
If you just want to try this recipe, you can half all ingredients and make just 20 truffles.
How to store your truffles
These school truffles are best enjoyed within a week of making, and you can store them in a fridge (or somewhere fairly cold) in an airtight container. Because these are not made with fresh cream, they have a longer shelf life than traditional cream based truffles.
How long will these truffles last?
Since we are already using a long shelf life ingredients, these digestive biscuits truffles will last for good 5-7 days. I’d still make them fresh if I wanted to give them as a presents.
More Chocolate Truffle Recipes
Now, that you’ve made these chocolate truffles with digestive biscuits, what do you think? Do let me know in the comments below and if you would like to make some more chocolate truffle recipes.
Why not stay in touch…
I hope you enjoy making this recipe and if you do, I’d love to know what you think! Let me know in the comments below or find me on Instagram or Facebook and add the hashtag #cocoaandheart so that I can see your post.
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Magdalena
Digestive Biscuits Truffles
Ingredients
- 400 grams digestive biscuits (plain) one large pack
- 1 tin condensed milk
- 125 grams unsalted butter
- 2-4 tablespoons cocoa powder (or drinking chocolate)
- 125 grams desiccated coconut
- pinch of fine salt
Toppings
- chocolate sprinkles
- desiccated coconut
- cocoa powder
Instructions
- Melt the butter first and leave to cool down a bit.
- Break and crush the digestive biscuits. The best way to do this is to place all the biscuits in a large ziplock bag and use a rolling pin to crush them.
- Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl, add the condensed milk and butter.
- Mix gently until you have a good consistency.
- Scoop out a heaped teaspoon of the mixture and roll in cocoa powder or a topping of your choice.
- Leave to set in a fridge for a couple of hours and enjoy!
Never tasted these before, but they sounded like a fun thing to make. I’ve only made 1/2 the recipe quantity as I live on my own, but next time I’ll make the whole recipe and give more to my friends!