My favourite : Ferrero Raffaello clone (white chocolatey truffle)

Raffaello are a coconut candy made by the same people who make Ferrero Rocher, the delicious chocolate hazelnut truffles. While Raffaello aren't as popular, they have a unique coconut almond taste. They advertise they contain no chocolate, and the closest approximation I could get at home was a white chocolate-y recipe - milk and fat. If you were to use cocoa butter as the fat, you'd get white chocolate, but if using vegetable oil or butter it's no longer chocolate.

     Raffaello and Rocher have a spherical waffle cookie "shell". I don't think that's something you can do at home. Most home recipes for either candy roll the filling in crushed cookies to make the same effect, so I tried that on half of the batch. In the end, the moisture from the filling ends up softening the cookies to the point where they don't even crunch, so I think it's preferable to omit them here. With the coconut covering outside and the almonds inside, it came close enough to the real thing.



White chocolate-y truffle (Ferrero Raffaello)
Half recipe from Petit Chef, slightly adjusted, with weights roughly converted to volumes. Makes about 30 truffles


1/4 cup water
1 stick butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups powdered skim milk
1 cup dried shredded coconut
2 oz almonds, toasting optional, cut into medium size pieces

     Combine water, butter, and sugar in a large saucepan and heat to boiling. Once boiling, remove from heat. Add the powdered milk and 1/4 cup coconut and stir constantly until dissolved and thick. Pour into a refrigerator safe container, preferably one that lets the mixture spread out a lot, and refrigerate for 20-30 minutes until the mix is cool to touch, but not so cold it's hard to form.
     Spread the remaining coconut in a shallow dish. Pull off a piece of the mix, place a few almond pieces in, and roll into roughly a 1" ball. Roll the ball in the coconut and place into a mini muffin cup. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
 

That's a lot of butter...and sugar...yea, this recipe isn't the healthiest

 This is the solid that forms once you add the powdered milk

 A shot of the ones that weren't consumed before I took this picture.