Caramel Apple Couscous Ball Truffles, Part I

Our association was invited to prepare snacks that would accompany afternoon tea at an afternoon event celebrating International Women's Day this weekend in Fes. The task: create sweet, small finger-food desserts using products from the association, as a way to provide us with some publicity and provide a novelty snack for attendees. One of the women in charge of the event and I began dreaming of truffles and pastries made from balls of couscous, and we were pretty sure we'd stumbled upon the idea of the century. What if we opened a bakery/patisserie where everything was made out of couscous? And this could be a whole chapter in the (yet-to-be-started) book I'm writing called 101 Couscous Recipes! Some of our fabulous, mouth-watering ideas included:
• Strawberry Jam and Dark Chocolate Couscous Balls
• Apple Cinnamon Raison Couscous Balls
• Reece's Peanut Butter Cup Couscous Balls
• Coconut Macaroon Couscous Balls
• Date, almond and honey Couscous Balls
• Caramel Apple Couscous Balls
• Snickers Couscous Balls
• Chocolate Orange Couscous Balls
• Boston Cream Couscous Balls
• Lemon Meringue Couscous Balls
• Carrot Cake Couscous Balls
• Chocolate Mint Couscous Balls
• Mojito Couscous Balls

So I bought a big bag of baking supplies, including a syringe to inject jam into the middle of these balls, and a friend who was visiting from the states, and my tutor and I spent a long rainy day trying to turn our brilliant ideas into reality. It didn't take long, however, for it to become clear that pastry chef was not my calling, and there was probably a reason why none of these had ever been created before. Couscous, quite simply, does not roll into balls. Refuses to roll into balls, even when combined with things that we thought should make it sticky, like honey, or melted chocolate. Every single combination we tried fell apart in a drippy, crumbly mess. We managed to trick the couscous into making a ball shape only twice: once, we found that if you boil, not steam the couscous, and leave it undercooked, it stays sticky enough to roll into balls that can then be dipped in chocolate. However, undercooked couscous has a pretty distinct, raw-flour taste that could not be covered up no matter how much jam we injected into the middle with the syringe. The second trick was to coat the inside of a tiny muffin paper with chocolate, stuff a tiny pinch of sweetened couscous into the middle, the pour more chocolate into the cup, encasing the couscous in chocolate and creating a kind of Reece's Miniatures. This method was not only a lot of work, but also left us with what was little more than cheap chocolate in a little cup, hardly a very exciting creation. At some point we gave up, dejected, cooked the remaining couscous with vegetables and spices the way it was intended, and resigned ourselves to thinking that maybe the book should be called "1 Recipe for Couscous" since that's how many recipes there seemed to be that actually worked.