Chocolate Truffles to Delight and Satisfy

Abundance is multi sensual. All of our senses experience delight, and they all influence each other.

Here is a recipe for some delicious chocolate truffles that are easy to throw together and make for a sumptuous gift for yourself or a loved one.

These truffles use essential oil to carry the rose. They are intense and almost savoury, with a distinctive woody aroma achieved through the quality of the rose oil together with the cardamom. Ensure your rose oil is real not synthetic...

Pistachio, Cardamon and Rose Chocolate Truffles- Makes a lot of them...!

400 g high quality organic dark chocolate 70% cocoa or more 

Half a cup of organic coconut cream 

A generous slug of coconut oil - a largeish tablespoon

25 Cardamom pods

Rose Otto essential oil

Pistachio creamed butter (available in Italian Delis, or make your own by grinding roasted pistachios with sugar)

Lightly toasted pistachios for decoration

In the cauldron....

Melt the coconut cream together with the oil gently over some hot water, bruise the cardamom pods with a pestle and mortar and put them into the cream. Leave for about 30 minutes for the flavour to infuse the cream. Leave to cool. Melt the chocolate over a bain-marie, whilst it's melting, strain the cardamom from the cream and gently reheat it. Add the cream to the chocolate, make the texture consistent and take off the heat. Add about 10 drops of pure rose essential oil. You'll need a lot more if your oil is in a carrier oil. Leave to cool and then refrigerate.

Once it's hard it's ready to form and hand roll into truffles. 

Scoop out portions and roll into truffles, dust with cocoa to finish. For the Pistachio filling, make a little well in the truffle ball and pat some pistachio cream into the hole, then dust the whole truffle with cocoa powder, and if you like, put a pistachio in it for good measure. 

There you have it. A sublimely decadent treat, or gift, that aren't for the faint hearted. 

Seasonal blessings to everyone everywhere, 

Much love, 

Loren