At a Christmas party I went to last year, one of my Paris-dwelling anglophone friends turned up late-on with a very elegant-looking box of homemade chocolate truffles. We all ooh-ed and aah-ed over them: they were so chocolatey and soft and the white chocolate coating set it all off perfectly. And so we asked for the recipe. Much to our astonishment, it turns out the chocolates were made from crushed up Oreo biscuits, cream cheese and not much else.

Since then, every time I’ve seen a pack of Oreos at the supermarket, it’s reminded me of those truffles at Christmas.

Last week, I finally gave into temptation and bought a couple of packs of biscuits and tried to recreate them.

(The ‘official’ recipe is here, complete with American measurements: http://www.kraftrecipes.com/recipes/easy-oreo-truffles-95085.aspx )

As is so often the case with a memory of food, my recreation just wasn’t quite as good as the original.

Not to be deterred, I decided to take things in a different direction. I had stumbled upon some roasted, unsalted peanuts in an organic shop and was on the lookout for a starring role for them. This seemed like the perfect opportunity. I blitzed them up and stirred into the cookie and cream cheese dough with a good amount of smooth peanut butter.

And why stop there? I also added peanut butter to the melted white chocolate coating.

The addition of peanut butter makes them a bit softer than the originals would have been, so you do need to chill them well before dipping in the chocolate and store in the fridge.

Really peanutty chocolate cookie truffles

Makes approximately 50 bite-sized truffles

Ingredients

Chocolate cookie truffles

• 100g roasted, unsalted peanuts
• 28 Oreo biscuits (2 packs)
• 150g cream cheese
• 3 tbsp smooth peanut butter
• pinch salt

Peanut butter & white chocolate coating

• 200g white chocolate
• 4 tbsp smooth peanut butter
• sprinkles to decorate

Method

First, blitz up the peanuts in a food processor until they resemble fine breadcrumbs and tip into a bowl.

Next, pop the Oreo biscuits into the food processor (no need to wash out the bowl in the meantime) and blitz them too so there are no whole pieces of cookie visible. Add the cream cheese, peanut butter, peanut rubble, pinch of salt and whizz again.

Make walnut-sized balls using a melon-baller or teaspoon to scoop out the dough and then roll between your hands.

Place the 50 or so balls on a baking tray lined with baking paper and chill in the freezer for 30 minutes to firm up.

Just before they have had their allotted time, melt the white chocolate in a bowl over a saucepan of gently-simmering water. When it has melted, remove from the heat and stir in the peanut butter until smooth. Leave the mixture to cool but not harden.

Now dip each of the balls into the chocolate and peanut butter mixture (and there’s no mess-free way to do this, so you may as well embrace the fun of getting covered in chocolate) and place back on the baking tray. If you’re going to decorate with sprinkles, you’ll need to do this as you go along as the chocolate will harden quite quickly on the chilled cookie balls.

When you’ve finished, return the baking tray of chocolate-covered cookie balls to the fridge for an hour. You can then peel them off the baking tray and put them in airtight containers.

Keep them in the fridge until just before you want to eat them.