Happy Halloween!
The end of October is nearly here, and in many countries throughout the world, that means celebrating Halloween! Growing up in Denmark (in the 90’s/very early 2000’s), Halloween wasn’t really a thing – but our family did celebrate it anyway because of our American dad! We dressed up in costumes and went trick or treating through the rooms in our house 😂 Now it’s definitely become more of a widespread celebration, even in Scandinavia! If you’re interested in learning more about Halloween, we wrote a blog post about it last year – read it here!
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Spooky Confections
It wouldn’t be a celebration (or holiday, if you can call it that!) without a festive dessert. Every year, we love seeing all the fun creations that people make for their Halloween gatherings. We wanted to add our own spin this year by modifying one of our favorite quick and easy Danish treats, romkugler! These are basically truffles made from combining leftover cake, melted chocolate, cocoa powder, jam, and rum (although you can make it non-alcoholic by adding water, or even coffee) and stirring it together until it forms a sticky dough. Then, you shape it into balls, and then the fun decoration can begin!
How to Make the Shapes
We decided to make four creatures for our Halloween romkugler – dark chocolate spiders, white chocolate spiders, white chocolate ghosts, and chocolate bats. It was so fun to put these together, and it can be a great activity for the whole family. Feel free to get creative and make different shapes; we’ve included some guidelines on how we made our creatures below, and also in the recipe itself. First, we use candy melts to pipe legs for the spiders (using both dark chocolate melts and white chocolate melts), bat wings, mouths for the ghosts, and eyes (you can definitely use store-bought googley eyes instead) and letting the candy melt chocolate set before beginning the assembly. We make sure to pipe enough shapes to make eight of each kind, so there’s 32 truffles in total.
Dark Chocolate Spiders
- Dip the truffle ball in melted dark chocolate candy melts.
- Immediately attach the dark chocolate legs, four on each side.
- Add candy eyes/piped chocolate eyes to the top of the spider, using extra melted candy melt to attach them if needed.
- Let it fully set!
White Chocolate Spiders
- Roll the truffle ball in shredded coconut
- Immediately attach the white chocolate legs, four on each side, using extra white chocolate melts to stick them on it needed.
- Add candy eyes/piped chocolate eyes to the top of the spider, using extra melted candy melt to attach them to the top of the spider.
- Let it fully set!
White Chocolate Ghosts
- Take a truffle ball and press it into more of an oval shape, with a flat bottom.
- Dip the whole thing in white chocolate candy melt and place on a piece of parchment paper. It’s okay if it floods around the edge a little, it just adds more to the ghostly effect 😂
- Immediately place the mouth and eyes onto the surface. If it’s already set, use extra melted candy melts to attach them.
Dark Chocolate Bats
- Roll a truffle ball in unsweetened cocoa powder.
- Attach bat wings to either side by pressing it into the truffle. If you need to, you can attach using melted candy melts.
- Attach the eyes to the top of the bat heads by using melted candy melts to stick them on.
Super Customizable!
If all of this piping and attaching of chocolate is sounding like a lot of work, you can make these however you would like! If you buy sprinkles and candy eyes from the store, you can make your own little sprinkle creatures. You could even make ghosts by rolling in coconut or powdered sugar instead, and then adding eyes. It’s supposed to be a fun recipe, and you might not enjoy piping candy melts to make spider legs and bat wings, so please change it up in whatever way you want!
Candy Melts vs. Tempered Chocolate
You may have noticed that we’ve been referring to “candy melts” in this recipe. Instead of using melted chocolate, or working with tempered chocolate (which can be notoriously difficult), we decided to use melting wafers/candy melts. The melts set quite quickly at room temperature after melting in the microwave or using a double boiler, meaning that it’s a much easier ingredient to control. Plus, you can reheat the melts if they start to set, with no problems you may encounter with tempered chocolate. You can buy some wafers on Amazon here!*
Let us know if you try it!
As always, we’d love to know if you try out our recipe – please leave a comment below, or tag us on Instagram! You can even send us an email if you want. We love to see your creations and we especially want to see if you make any different variations of these creatures this October! Happy Halloween!
Halloween Truffles
Ingredients
TRUFFLE
- 300 grams pound cake, leftover cake, muffins, or cookies; crumbled into small pieces/crumbs
- 100 grams dark chocolate, melted
- 15 grams unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2 tbsp jam
- 1.5 tbsp rum (OR just use water! you could also use coffee for more of a kick!)
DECORATION
- 1 (283g) package dark chocolate candy melts
- 1 (283g) package white chocolate candy melts
- Unsweetened coconut flakes for rolling (as needed)
- Unsweetened cocoa power for rolling (as needed)
- Candy eyes (optional, you can make your own like we did!)
- Sprinkles (optional, but you can also roll the truffles in festive Halloween sprinkles to make it easy!)
- Plastic sandwich bags for piping
Instructions
- Melt the dark chocolate for the truffles, either in the microwave or using a double boiler (boiling water in a pot with a heat safe bowl over the top where you melt the chocolate!)
- Crumble the pound cake into a medium bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer.
- Add the melted chocolate, cocoa powder, jam, and rum (or water, or coffee).
- Mix until a paste or sticky dough forms.
- Shape the dough into balls with your hands (we make 30-32 balls, depending on the size we end up rolling them!)
- Set the truffles aside on a plate and place in the fridge.
- Now it's time to prepare the decorations! We've listed a few supplies that we use, but this recipe is super flexible. You can substitute ingredients and use your creativity! For example, feel free to use pretzel sticks for the spider legs to make it a little easier.
- To make the decorations: Heat up the dark chocolate candy melts and the white chocolate candy melts until melted either in the microwave or using a double boiler. Place about half of the melted mixture for each of the chocolate melts in a plastic sandwich bag. You can put the bag into a glass and fold the edge of the bag over the edge of the glass to make the transfer easier!
- Prepare a baking sheet with a piece of parchment paper to pipe on. You may end up needing two sheets of parchment paper depending on how much you are piping.
- Cut off a corner of the sandwich bag to start piping. Begin by piping upside down "v" shapes for the spider legs – we pipe both dark chocolate and white chocolate legs.
- Make sure you make enough for about 8 spiders of each color chocolate, or just as many as you would like! For 8 spiders, you need to pipe 64 legs (I know it sounds like a lot – your spiders can have less than 8 legs if you like 😂)
- Next, pipe bat wings out of the dark chocolate. We pipe one upside down (but very open "v" shape, then connect the sides by piping a few connected semicircles, and then fill in the shape. Repeat with the mirror wing for the other side! For 8 bat truffles, make sure to pipe 16 wings.
- Then, pipe dark chocolate ovals for the ghost mouths. For 8 ghosts, pipe 8 ghost mouths.
- This next step is optional, but if you don't have candy eyes on hand, you can pipe your own! Pipe white chocolate ovals (in sets of 2) and let them dry; you will need to pipe 32 sets!
- Then, pipe a dot of dark chocolate towards the bottom of the ovals. Let this set, and now you have eyes!
- Once the parchment paper (or multiple pieces of parchment paper) is full of piped chocolate, you can pop it in the fridge on the baking sheet to set for about 5 minutes. Using candy melts means that it will also set at room temperature, it just may take a little bit longer!
- Once all of the chocolate has set, make sure to remelt the remaining dark chocolate and white chocolate so you can dip some of the truffles! You can keep remelting as you work, if the candy melts are starting to set.
- Take the truffles out of the fridge and begin making your creatures.
For the bats:
- Roll the truffle in cocoa powder.
- Then attach bat wings by pressing each wing into the side of the truffle (using extra melted candy melts to attach if needed!)
- Add eyes by adding a little bit of chocolate to the back of the eyes and sticking them on the truffle. Set aside and repeat!
For the dark chocolate spiders:
- Dip the whole truffle in melted dark chocolate melts.
- Then place on a piece of parchment and immediately attach 4 legs to each side – they should stick to the melted chocolate, but if it is setting too quickly, you can dip the legs in chocolate to attach too. Be careful using too much force, the legs can break!
- Add eyes to the top as well, either on top of the chocolate when it's still not set, or by putting a little chocolate on the back to get it to stick. Let set and repeat for as many truffles as you like!
For the white chocolate spiders:
- Roll the truffle in shredded coconut.
- Attach the white chocolate legs either by dipping the legs in chocolate and pressing onto the sides, or by pressing them gently into the side of the truffle.
- Add eyes by putting a little melted candy chocolate melt on the back and sticking them to the truffle. Set aside and repeat!
For the ghosts:
- Take your round truffle and press into more of an oblong shape with a flat bottom.
- Then dip in white chocolate candy melt and place onto a piece of parchment paper.
- Immediately add the ghost mouth and eyes to the liquid candy melt exterior. If it's setting too quickly, add some melted candy melt to the back and stick on the ghost. Repeat with as many ghosts as you want to make!
- If you have Halloween sprinkles, you can also roll a few in sprinkles for a super quick and festive decorated truffle!
- We keep our truffles in the fridge so they keep for longer and remain super snappy with the candy melt exterior. Enjoy, and Happy Halloween!
