Gluten Free Butter Pecan Cheesecake Truffles

As I said in my last post, I made two desserts for the wedding. I immediately settled on sugar cookies for the first dessert, but the second dessert took a lot of brainstorming. I wanted something that would travel well, be spectacular, unique and gluten-free. I wanted something in small servings, but we already had cookies and tarts. 

After a couple weeks of thinking and searching, I put it off for awhile. Then one of my favourite blogs, EZ Gluten Free, posted a recipe that I thought sounded pretty perfect. The best thing was that I could make it several days ahead. Since I had a lot of things to do the week before the wedding, I made it as early as I could.

The recipe does include a lot of chilling time, and one ingredient did require some hunting down, but the actual work didn't take all that long and I managed to get some other things done will the ingredients were chilling.

Also, seriously, does it get better than Butter Pecan Cheesecake Truffles?

So you really need to click through and read that recipe, but to sum it up for you... You brown some butter and brown sugar on the stove, then mix it with some cream cheese and vanilla. The cream cheese mixture goes in the fridge to chill, and you mix some chopped pecans with some crushed cookies. The very specific gluten-free pecan shortbread cookies were the hardest thing to find, but I did find a pack at the health food store. Also, it's the only ingredient that is explicitly gluten-free. If you don't care about gluten content, just use regular pecan shortbread cookies.

Once the cream cheese stuff is chilled, you scoop up little balls of cream cheese and roll it in the pecan mixture. Once every little ball was rolled, I put them into containers between layers of plastic wrap and froze them for several days. I kept the containers frozen until it was time to leave for the rehearsal dinner. The wedding (and rehearsal dinner) was all in a town two hours from home, so I put the truffles in a cooler until we got there, and then they went back in a freezer. A few minutes before the reception, I pulled out some mini cupcake liners and plopped each truffle in a liner on a table. It took maybe five minutes. Right away, they were frozen solid, but they warmed up pretty quick, and by the time the last one was devoured they were still a little cold.

Overall, these worked perfectly for what I wanted. They didn't take long to make, they kept well, and they travelled just as well. Oh, and they delicious. Everyone who had one told me they were amazing.

Except my sister (the bride). Apparently, she doesn't like cheesecake. I knew that, I guess, and she didn't mind, because there were plenty of other sweets. The groom, on the other hand, told me that I'm going to go visit them and make these. I don't think he even cares if I visit, as long as he gets more of these.