Digestive Biscuits Truffle - Easy School Truffle Recipe (2024)

Easy to make chocolate truffles recipe, made with digestive biscuits, condensed milk and cocoa powder. This is a no-cook digestive biscuits truffle recipe based on an old school recipe and perfect activity to make with children.

These truffles are a bit different to a higher end version with cream and quality chocolate, but they are surprisingly delicious and make a perfect treat.

Why make this recipe

• Easy truffle recipe to make
• Budget friendly
• Keep for much longer than cream based truffles
• No need for an ‘actual chocolate aka coverture’!
• No need for cooking/heating up the ingredients

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The digestive biscuits truffle recipe history

Digestive biscuits truffles were chocolate treats popular in British schools home economics or cooking classes towards the mid to end 20 century.

There were cheaper versions of the grown-up chocolate truffles and were easy for children to make during the school class.

I’m assuming that this recipe was developed after the second world war when real chocolate was still rationed, expensive and very difficult to come by.

While a lot of war time food and sweets rationing shopped after the end of the war a lot of food items continued to be rationed well until the 1950s. Chocolate was rationed until 5^thof February 1953 and sugar until September 1953.

That is why this digestive biscuits truffle recipe originally uses only drinking chocolate as the only source of chocolate, and the sugar element comes from condensed milk.

Fresh cream, which is what chocolatiers use mostly to create chocolate truffles these days, was far too expensive and not everyone had a fridge to keep it in.

Since digestive biscuits were invented around 1839 by two Scottish doctors, it’s likely that this school truffle recipe is originally Scottish too.

Chocolate making equipment

The good thing about this recipe, is that you don’t actually need any specific chocolate making equipment. You can use whatever you have at home and in your kitchen. For these school biscuit truffles you’ll need:

• one large bowl
• one smaller bowl
• spoons

Small saucepan to heat the butter or small bowl to heat the butter in the microwave.

Notes on ingredients and possible substitutions

Digestive biscuits

Digestive biscuits were invented to help to aid digestion, and they are probably a a little bit healthier than other types of biscuit. They would also be cheap to buy and easy to crumble into the recipe mix.

If you want to you can use any other kind of biscuits, that are not very sweet, for example shortbread biscuits.

Butter

I’m also guessing that the original recipe wouldn’t include butter, as it would add to the cost of the recipe.

You can easily leave it out, if you like, just adjust the amount of the biscuits (you will need more than stated in the recipe or omit the desiccated coconut to even out the wet/dry ingredients).

Coconut

The desiccated coconut is also a later addition, making the recipe extra morish, but of course adding to the cost.

If you want to make this recipe on a budget, you only need three ingredients — tin of condensed milk, pack of digestive biscuits and a cocoa powder.

Cocoa powder

I would suggest using cocoa powder instead of the drinking chocolate powder (the original recipe has this, because of the cost).

The cocoa powder will, of course, give you a stronger chocolate flavour, and these days it’s probably not more expensive than a good drinking cocoa powder.

Before you start making this chocolate truffle recipe, I have to warn you, that these school truffles are very sweet and totally addictive. Once you make them, you’ll know!

Condensed Milk

Condensed milk is nicely thick in consistency and helps these digestive biscuits truffles stick together. Condensed milk is already fairly sweet, which is why this recipe doesn’t have any added sugar.

One standard condensed milk tin is about 397 grams – just in case you have a different tin size.

Salt

Sugar doesn’t have much of a flavour on it’s own and a lot of sugar (like in this recipe) can actually make the everything taste quite bland. A tiny pinch of fine salt, dissolved in a bit of water helps to bring all these flavours together.

How to make digestive biscuits truffles with condensed milk recipe

Melt the butter first and leave to cool down a bit.

Break and crush the digestive biscuits. The best way to do this is to place all the biscuits in a large ziplock bag and use a rolling pin to crush them.

Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl, add the condensed milk and butter.

Mix gently until you have a good consistency.

Scoop out a heaped teaspoon of the mixture and roll in cocoa powder or a topping of your choice.

Leave to set in a fridge for a couple of hours and enjoy!

Pro tip

If the truffle mixture is a little too soft for rolling out the truffles, leave it in the fridge for an hour or so. This will firm up the butter and the condensed milk and allow you to form the truffles a bit easier.

Quantity & Batch size

This recipe makes about 30-40 chocolate truffles, but the final amount depends on how big you want to make them. You can easily double the amount, if you are making some for a party or a school sale.

If you just want to try this recipe in a small quantity, you can half all ingredients and make just 20 truffles.

How to store your truffles

These school truffles are best enjoyed within a week of making, and you can store them in a fridge (or somewhere fairly cold) in an airtight container, away from a direct heat and light.

A cold kitchen cupboard (about 18 C) is perfect, but anywhere where the chocolates are not going to be exposed to varied temperature is fine too. Keeping the truffles at constant temperature is important, because if the temperature is highter even for a short while it can melt the chocolate and could spoil all your hard work.

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How long will digestive biscuits truffle last?

Because these biscuit truffles are not made with fresh cream, they have a longer shelf life than traditional cream based truffles.

Since we are already using a long shelf life ingredients, these digestive biscuit truffles will last for a good 5-7 days.

The truffles will last a little longer (extra 5-7 days) if you dip them in the tempered chocolate before you roll them in the cocoa powder. The chocolate layer seals the biscuit truffle filling inside and prevents air to get in, which in turn prevents any bacteria growth.

I’d usually coat the truffles with the extra chocolate layer if I’m thinking of giving these as a little foodie gifts, since it’s better if they have a slightly longer shelf life.

How to make this recipe without condensed milk

There might be a lot of reasons, why you might like to make this recipe without condensed milk. One could be because you don’t have any or you are concerned about the amount of sugar that’s in the condensed milk.

The good thing is that this recipe is so versatile, that you can make it with a few different substitutions for condensed milk. Since condensed milk is very thick, you will need use about 1/2 less of any replacement than the amount given for the condensed milk.

I would always start with less liquid and then add more only if it’s needed. This is why in the notes bellow I’ve included measurements for less than 50% of the original weight.

You can then decide to leave out any extra sugar (and make these truffles with less calories) or add extra sugar in a form of honey, agave syrup or icing sugar. I don’t recommend using caster or granulated sugar with this recipe, because the sugar wouldn’t blend in and wouldn’t give you a nice texture.

Condensed milk can be replaced with

• Evaporated Milk
• Single or Double Cream
• Plant based cream (Oats, Soya etc.)

Use only about 150 grams/ml and add 1 tablespoon of honey or agave syrup to sweeten the cream or milk. Keep all the other ingredients in the recipe the same and only add more cream or milk (and the sweetener of your choice) if the mixture needs it (e.i. if it’s too dry).

Why not stay in touch…

I hope you enjoy making this recipe and if you do, I’d love to know what you think! Let me know in the comments below or find me on Instagram or Facebook and add the hashtag #cocoaandheart so that I can see your post.

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Magdalena

Now, that you’ve made these chocolate truffles with digestive biscuits, what do you think? Do let me know in the comments below and if you would like to make some more chocolate truffle recipes.

This recipe was originally written on 2 June 2019 and last tested and updated on 5 April 2023