Pumpkin Chocolate Truffles

These were tasty. The batch came out to 50 of the little buggers, so I gave most of them away. I don't need 50 little balls of truffly goodness staring out of the fridge at me every day. That spells trouble. Or rather, it spells Rehkmira, eating a bowl full of truffles for breakfast. No thanks.

I made the whole batch without tasting a single thing. It was impressive. I didn't even eat a finished truffle until they had all chilled for four hours or so. Why? I was afraid. I mean, *pumpkin* truffles? Even with the chocolate involved, that's a bit on the gross-sounding side. But I finally was brave, and consumed one. Not bad. The ones rolled in powdered sugar were richer than the almond ones, though I'm not sure how that came to be.

Basically, the recipe calls for 64 ground up nilla wafers, a cup of ground, toasted almonds, roughly 3/4 of a cup of powdered sugar (I misread the recipe here and added it all at once - I was supposed to reserve 1/4 cup for rolling later, but it turned out well this way), 1/3 cup of wet stuff (called for chocolate or coffee liqueur, but Dirt Town is dry, and I wasn't in the mood to wander all over the panhandle in search of cooking booze, so I used apple juice), 1/2 cup of mashed up pumpkin, and one whole cup of glorious semi-sweet chocolate chips, melted. You mix up the dry, then you add the wet, then the chocolate. Then you remember that there's 2 teaspoons of cinnamon that you forgot, and you desperately stir that in with your fingers, because the stuff is too thick for a spoon. Roll into balls, roll in covering of choice, and chill. They're very good. I think I'll make some while I'm home this December.

Also speaking of December and home, I have reserved a laptop for the trip. My family doesn't know it yet, but they'll be very grateful for this. I will be able to type as late into the night as necessary, without disturbing them. Considering how late into the night I can type, this is a good, good thing. Also, curse the day I signed up to grade papers, I will be grading during Christmas. Why, you ask, appalled? Because they screwed up big time and there will be all sorts of papers left at the end that the CI (that's me) will end up grading. Right up to the 23rd, or some such foulness. Now, since they screwed it up, I think they should do the grading, but of course, that's not the way things work. People who mess up in the higher ranks never pay for their mistakes. They pass that on to the peons below them. Sigh.

So I'm still grading the third major assignment. Guess what assignment they're turning in? The 8th major one. This is not counting the million and three minor assignments that are in the mix. Merry Christmas.

Oh well. Ranting aside, I'm not doing poorly. Class Thursday is planned and ready. The book and paper for tonight have been finished--early no less. And I'm in the market to purchase Monty Python films for research purposes. Who gets to research Monty Python? Grad students with the wiles to avoid the boring paper topics, that's who.

I'm in the mood for chocolate. I'm not sure why. But I want the bitter black as night chocolate. Just a few small pieces. Sigh.

Well, I'm off to write more. Have nice days, you hear?

End.