Buttercreams

So what do you do when you want to get back on your coworkers' good side after not bringing anything to share at the last couple of monthly pot-lucks?  You make buttercream candies, of course!  It's also handy for making sure your weekly sci-fi night buddies don't rescind your invitation for not bringing them food lately, too.  To make these, you will need 4 cups of confectioners' sugar, 2/3 cup white chocolate chips, 1 stick of butter, a teaspoon of some flavor extract (I used raspberry for these), 1/4 cup whipping cream, 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips, and 2 tablespoons of shortening.

Not exactly my healthiest recipe

In a large bowl, mix together the butter, whipping cream, and flavor extract until it's kind of fluffy.

Or it looks kind of like cottage cheese

Mix in one cup of the confectioners' sugar.  Melt the white chocolate chips, either in a double boiler or the microwave, and mix that in as well.  Gradually add in the remaining sugar until it holds its shape.  I'd also taste test it at this point to see if you need to add any more flavoring.  I ended up adding in another teaspoon of the raspberry extract.  You might also want to add food coloring.

Now it looks raspberry-ish!

Cover it and stick it in the fridge for a couple of hours, or until you can form little balls out of the mixture.  When it's ready, shape it into balls about an inch in diameter and put them on a wax-paper-covered cookie sheet.

Now, back into the fridge they go!  Leave them there for several hours or overnight.  When they are nice and firm and dry, prepare your chocolate coating by melting the semi-sweet chocolate chips and shortening together in a double boiler.  You may remember this from when I made Oreo truffles.  Toss the little balls one a time into the melted chocolate to get them all nice and coated and put them back on the wax paper.  Make sure you don't leave them in too long, because they can melt pretty quickly.  If you want to make them fancy, toss on some sprinkles or colored sugar before the chocolate hardens.  And if you ended up doing this part way later than you'd intended because you were at the gym for an extra twenty minutes due to a fire alarm and then got stuck at the tunnel on your way home for another half hour, you might want to just leave them plain.

These don't have to be refrigerated at this point, but it certainly won't hurt if you do.  When the chocolate is hardened, pack them up in a pretty little box and they are ready to go!  And your coworkers and friends will love you once again!

Ta-da!

You can also make these in whatever flavor you want.  I used raspberry extract, but the only limit is really just whatever your grocery store happens to have in stock.  You can also make chocolate or peanut butter buttercreams by substituting chocolate chips or peanut butter chips.  In those cases, I'd use some vanilla extract.  Although... I bet chocolate-raspberry buttercreams would be really good, too.  You can also use different chips for the coating.  So you could make milk chocolate buttercreams with a peanut butter coating.  I bet that would be tasty too.  Have fun with it!