Dark Chocolate Hazelnut Truffles (Vegan)

🌰 Hazelnut truffle ingredients

Semi-Sweet Vegan Chocolate Chips

This recipe is built to be practical, not some exhausting, costly bean-to-bar experiment. Ideally, use good quality semi-sweet chocolate chips (or you can use couverture, wafers, or a chopped chocolate bar) with at least 60-70% cocoa for a balanced sweetness and smooth melting. Or, if you aren't a freak (like I am) for dark chocolate, you can certainly use a vegan milk chocolate instead.

Roasted Hazelnuts

Use pre-roasted hazelnuts to make the process quick and easy, or roast 'em yourself in an oven, like I do when making homemade vegan Nutella. If working with whole hazelnuts, you can break them up for this recipe by chopping them by hand or pulsing them a few times in a food processor.

What's cool about this recipe is that it can be tweaked and made to work with other nuts too. Want to make some of them with pistachios or roasted almonds? Just swap 'em right in, ya big goof!

Refined Coconut Oil

Instead of having to deal with a finicky tempering process for these, simply adding some refined coconut oil to the chocolate coating helps us get a glossy, smooth texture. Of course, they will be a little more melty that way, but that's the price you pay for easy, right?

I do want to stress here that you want to use refined coconut oil, which has a much less noticeable coconut flavor. That's why I used the stuff for making everything from vegan matcha cookies to vegan banana muffins.

Chocolate Sandwich Cookies

These are optional, but I LOVE sprinkling these with a little ground chocolate sandwich cookie dust. A lot of people don't realize that Oreos are accidentally vegan (albeit full of crappy ingredients). There are gluten-free options out there too that just happen to be vegan. Otherwise, use cacao nibs (bits of unroasted chocolate beans) if you don't want to grab a whole pack of cookies just to make a couple spoonfuls of cookie dust!

Cocoa Butter

A key ingredient in the optional glaze, cocoa butter melts smoothly and has a great natural cocoa fragrance. You can use either regular cocoa butter or raw cacao butter interchangeably in this project. If you have some deodorized cocoa butter leftover from making my vegan parmesan cheese recipe, that stuff works fine in this recipe too.

Frangelico

This hazelnut liqueur is a killer secret weapon that you really need to add ASAP to your confectionary and pancake-making arsenal. For about a decade, we used it to make our white chocolate-glazed bourbon hazelnut ganache donuts. Anyway, if you try to avoid cooking with alcohol, feel free to swap it out with a mixture of hazelnut extract and maple syrup instead.

📖 How to make this hazelnut chocolate truffle recipe

Make your darkest chocolatey dreams come true by following these step-by-step photos with helpful tips. Or scroll down to the bottom of this page for the easy-to-print recipe card.

Step One

Make the Ganache:

Heat the plant-based milk in a medium saucepan over medium heat until it just starts to simmer. Place the chocolate chips in a heatproof bowl, pour the hot milk over them, and let it sit for 2 minutes to melt. Stir until smooth and fully combined.

Step Two

Nutty by Nature:

Stir in the roasted crushed hazelnuts, salt, and vanilla extract until evenly distributed. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or until the ganache is firm enough to shape.

Step Three

Firm the Truffles:

Scoop out tablespoon-sized portions of the chilled truffle mixture and roll them into balls between your hands. Dust each truffle with cocoa powder and place them on a tray. Freeze the truffles for 45 minutes until they are firm.

Step Four

Melt the Coating:

Melt the chocolate chips and coconut oil together in a heatproof bowl over a pot of simmering water (double boiler) or in the microwave in 15-second intervals, stirring after each interval until smooth and glossy.

Step Five

Enrobe the Truffles:

Using a fork, dip the frozen truffles into the melted chocolate, coating them completely. Let any excess chocolate drip off into the bowl. Transfer truffles to a wire rack to set.
✅ Place the wire rack over a baking sheet so you can reuse any chocolate that drips off-just add it right back into the pot with the rest of the enrobing chocolate.

Step Six

Garnish the Truffles:

While the chocolate coating is still wet, sprinkle each truffle with ground toasted hazelnuts, ground chocolate sandwich cookies, or cacao nibs.

Let the truffles set on a parchment-lined tray at room temperature or in the refrigerator.

Step Seven

Glazed and Confused (Optional):

Melt the cocoa butter gently in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir in the powdered sugar and Frangelico until smooth.

Step Eight

Glazy Suzan:

Drizzle the glaze over the decorated hazelnut chocolate truffles using a small spoon or piping bag, and let the glaze set before serving. Otherwise, you can also just use vegan royal icing if you already have some on hand.