Oreo Truffles (an every ocassion treat)

These little suckers have become a MUST HAVE at every family gathering in our family, and requested at every holiday dinner, baby shower, bridal shower, or cookout. They are simple, easy, and decadently delicious!!!

What you need:
1 pack of Oreo's
1 8oz pack of cream cheese
1 pack of melting chocolate (you can choose white, milk, or dark chocolate)
1 pack of melting chocolate (in a different flavor that you chose earlier)
(this is the same type of chocolate you would use for a fondue fountain, strawberries, or pretzels)

NOTES:
1. You can use any brand of oreo cookies, generic or name brand. I have also heard these can be good with the vanilla cookies. You can also buy the pastel colored or red, orange, cream filling Oreos at Christmas, easter, Halloween, etc to make the truffles a little more festive.
2. There are several choices for melting chocolate. I have used the brick type and they work fine, but are VERY easy to scorch and burn, so just make SURE you only heat it in a small bowl in the micrwave for about 15 seconds at a time until its thin and runny. The other type I have used is called Bakers Melting Chocolate and it comes in a small bowl with a plastic lid. The chocolate looks like little discs and it is a microwave safe bowl. Its easy and clean. They have white and milk chocolate. If you use the Bakers Melting chocolate you will need TWO of whatever type of chocolate you want to dip in, and ONE of the type you want to drizzle with.
3. You do not HAVE to have two types of chocolate. You can just dip the balls and leave them plain without drizzle. I prefer them drizzled to make them look more fun or fancy.
4. If you drizzle, you just alternate your dipping chocolate with drizzle chocolate. Ex: dip in white chocolate and drizzle with milk, or Dip them in milk chocolate and then dye the white chocolate a certain color like hot pink, red, green, or a mix of pastels for the drizzle. You can get pretty creative with the drizzle to make them suit any ocassion.

To make:
Put the entire pack of Oreo cookies through a food processor and grind into a super fine powder. If you do not have a food processor, you can dump them in a Ziploc bag and smash them to smithereens. This is a great stress relieving technique AND the kids love to get involved in Oreo smashing.
Slightly soften the cream cheese either by letting it sit out on the counter for awhile or in the microwave for about 10 seconds.
Fold the cream cheese in a large bowl with the Oreo powder mix. It is best to use a KitchenAid or some sort of mixer if you have one. I used to try making these with a hand mixer, but the mix is just too thick for most hand mixers. If you dont have ANY type of mixer, use your hands. It should be a big thick black glob when you are done!
Now this step is optional, but it does make it a lot easier. Put the bowl of mix in the freezer for about a half hour until it starts to harden. This will make rolling the mix into balls much easier and a lot less sticky!
While its in the freezer, arrange several cookie sheets. You can line them with wax paper if you want.
When its ready, use a teaspoon to get a small amount of the mix out of the bowl and roll them into truffle sized balls. Compare to the size of a bubble gum ball, or if you place your thumb and first finger together. Place the rolled balls in rows on the cookie sheets.
When you have covered an entire cookie sheet, place the cookie sheet back in the freezer so that the balls can harden again.
When you are done rolling all the balls and the sheets are in the freezer, melt your chocolate.
Be sure to follow the directions on the melting chocolate EXACTLY so you dont burn it.
When the balls have been in the freezer for about a half hour and are hard, use a toothpick to dip them indivudually in the melted chocolate. This process takes some practice to get it in a quick, speedy, clean process, but I find that if you dip them with a toothpick and roll off the excess chocolate, it works well. Place them back on the cookie sheet in the same spot and use another toothpick to slide the ball onto the sheet. (We have perfected this to a science using FOUR toothpicks at a time, dipping them and placing on a sheet and then removing all 4 toothpicks at a time and repeating.
Once you have dipped all the balls and placed them back on the sheet, you will once AGAIN place them in the fridge to let the chocolate harden. (they only need to be in there a few minutes).
While they are in the fridge, melt your other chocolate. If you are going to color it, then color it now. (if you want to do several colors, melt the chocolate, separate it into indivudual bowls, and use a toothpick to mix in the coloring).
For this last step, if you are going to drizzle the balls for decoration, we have found there are several ways to do this.
1. You can dip a toothpick in the melted chocolate and drizzle them one at a time. This takes a little longer, but works.
2. I have begun using a cake piping icing bag. You can buy these at WalMart in the cake decorating section. You could also use a ziploc bag and poke a pin sized hole in the corner of the bag and squeeze the drizzle on the truffles. If you use a cake piping bag, you will need a tip that is TEENY TINY. Just pour the melted chocolate into your piping bag or ziploc and keep one finger over the tip until you are ready to drizzle. Squeezing it as you go, you can drizzle each truffle and evenc reate shapes like a heart, flower, letters, etc. You can see the ones I made for my baby shower below with a flower. I then added a candy pearl bead in the center for the finish.

Now youre done!
These should be kept in the fridge, we keep them in a tupperware bowl or zipoloc bag, and they are easily served on a tray or dessert tower. (although they NEVER last very long!)