Rosemary Chocolate Truffles: An Elegant Gift

Smooth and sumptuous chocolate truffles flavoured with, but not overpowered by, rosemary. If you want to make some elegant gifts for friends, family or work colleagues this Christmas, give these rosemary chocolate truffles a try. Truffles coated in chocolate are a little more difficult to make than those coated in cocoa powder, but the results are well worth the effort. 

Random Recipes

When Dom announced that this month’s Random Recipes was to choose something from a book gifted at Christmas last year, I thought oh good.

I was thrilled to have received Tea with Bea as a present last year and really haven’t used it much. Now was my chance, I thought. But something was drifting around in the back of my mind, trying to get break through to the surface.

With a feeling of doom, the thought finally emerged: I received two books for Christmas last year. The second was the highly regarded Cooking with Chocolate by Frederic Bau from the Ecole du Grand Chocolat Valrhona – eek!

Don’t get me wrong, this is a fantastic book and I love poring through its pages whilst having fantasies about reproducing the high art of patisserie found therein. But these are, I should stress, fantasies, not actuality. I mean to say, me? Actually make something from it? 

I used a random generator hoping against hope that Tea with Bea would be chosen; after all I did have a 50% chance. But, it was not to be. With heavy heart, I used the random generator once again. Page 378  of Cooking with Chocolate gave me a concoction so complicated I nearly fainted on the spot. A cake made up of seven, yes seven different recipes: chocolate sponge, ginduja pastry, gold-dusted chocolate shards, chocolate custard, cocoa syrup, chocolate mousse and a chocolate glaze.

I foresaw cancelling Christmas as I locked myself in the kitchen for the next few days. No, sorry Dom. For the first time in all these months of entering Random Recipes I was going to cheat. I had a tentative look at the recipe on the previous page and then looked again. Yippee, Golden Palets (or truffles to you and me).

I wanted to make chocolates for Christmas anyway. I was also keen to enter Vanessa’s virtual Lets Make Christmas chocolate event as I’d sadly missed the real live one at the Rococo Chocolate Factory in London. So this recipe was perfect. Even the thought of tempering chocolate and the three stars donating hardest level recipe, did not put me off. They seemed to be simplicity itself in comparison to the da Vinci Code of cakes.

Rosemary Chocolate Truffles

On 12/12/12 it was my Great Uncle’s 100th birthday. There is a big family get together up in Kent this weekend to celebrate this momentous and unusual event. I wanted to make a particularly good job of these chocolates as some of them are destined for the birthday boy. No pressure then.

Inevitably, I changed the recipe, but like to think I stayed true to the spirit of the golden palets. I flavoured the ganache with rosemary rather than vanilla and upped some of the quantities as I wanted to make a goodly number.

My tempering didn’t give my the glossy chocolate I was hoping for, but I wasn’t really surprised. Apart from anything else, my kitchen was colder than the fridge, which doesn’t make for happy chocolate.

However, after the three hours it took me to temper the chocolate and dip everything, I was determined to be pleased with the results. And although the truffles weren’t super shiny, the chocolate lasted well, kept its snap and didn’t bloom.

I made fifty four chocolate in total: twenty four moulded and thirty hand rolled balls. How many you make will depend on the size you make them and whether you use chocolate moulds or not. I hunted around for hours, trying to find suitable boxes to put them all in.

I actually melted 340g of chocolate as I was also making caramelised chocolate brazils. But you should only need about 200g for the amount of ganache given in the recipe below.

The truffles certainly taste fantastic, with the flavour of rosemary coming through nicely, but not too strongly. The texture is beautifully smooth and with a bit of dressing up, they looked fine.

Rosemary Chocolate Truffles: Top Tips

Use your favourite type of dark chocolate for this recipe. The higher the cocoa content, the richer the result. This can be too intense for some people. If you prefer, you can make the truffle centres with milk chocolate.

If you want to temper chocolate properly, you will need a thermometer. However, you can do it the quick and dirty way, though good results are not guaranteed. Melt only three quarters of your chocolate. As soon as it’s runny and smooth, remove from the heat and add the remaining quarter of chocolate. Leave for a couple of minutes to melt, then stir and use.

Instead of enrobing these truffles with chocolate, you could simple roll truffle balls in cocoa powder. It’s a lot quicker making them this way, but they won’t have quite the same impact.

Other Truffle Recipes You Might Like

• Dairy free sesame truffles
• Easy coffee truffles
• Gingerbread chocolate truffles (vegan)
• Goat’s cheese chocolate truffles
• Lemon balm milk chocolate truffles
• St Clement’s cake truffles

Keep in Touch

Thanks for visiting Tin and Thyme. If you make these sumptuous rosemary chocolate truffles , I’d love to hear about it in the comments below. And do please rate the recipe. Have you any top tips? Do share photos on social media too and use the hashtag #tinandthyme, so I can spot them.

For more delicious and nutritious recipes follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flipboard or Pinterest. And don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE to my weekly newsletter. Or why not join the conversation in our Healthy Vegetarian Whole Food Recipes Facebook Group?

If you’d like more homemade edible gift ideas, follow the link and you’ll find I have quite a lot of them. All delicious and nutritious, of course.

Choclette x

Rosemary Chocolate Truffles. PIN IT.

Rosemary Chocolate Truffles – The Recipe

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5 from 11 votes

Rosemary Chocolate Truffles

Smooth and sumptuous chocolate truffles flavoured with, but not overpowered by, rosemary. If you want to make some elegant gifts for friends, family or work colleagues, give these rosemary chocolate truffles a try. Truffles coated in chocolate are a little more difficult to make than those coated in cocoa powder, but the results are well worth the effort.

Cook ModeToggle to keep screen awake

Prep Time1 hour hr 30 minutes mins

Cook Time0 minutes mins

Setting Time3 hours hrs

Total Time4 hours hrs 30 minutes mins

Course: After Dinner, Snack

Cuisine: British

Keyword: chocolate, Christmas, gift, honey, rosemary, truffles

Servings: 54 chocolates

Calories: 70kcal

Author: Choclette @ Tin and Thyme

Ingredients

• 1 sprig fresh rosemary
• 250 ml double cream (heavy cream)
• 2 tbsp honey flavoursome (I used set Cornish honey)
• 240 g dark chocolate (I used Green & Black’s Cook’s 72%)
• 25 g unsalted butter diced
• 200 g dark chocolate (I used Green & Black’s 72% Cook’s)

Metric – US Customary

Instructions

• Place the rosemary sprig in a medium sized pan.
  1 sprig fresh rosemary
• Pour in the cream and bring to a simmer.
  250 ml double cream (heavy cream)
• Turn the heat off and leave to infuse until the cream is cold.
• Remove the rosemary.
• Add the honey to the cream and warm the mixture up again until it’s just hot and the honey had melted.
  2 tbsp honey
• Give a good stir.
• Meanwhile melt the first batch of chocolate in a bowl suspended over a pan of hot water.
  240 g dark chocolate
• Stir until smooth then remove from the heat.
• Pour one third of the cream into the chocolate and stir in quick small circles until it’s all incorporated.
• Pour in another third and repeat. Repeat with the final third.
• Add the butter and stir until melted and smooth.
  25 g unsalted butter
• Now you can do one of two things: 1) Spoon the ganache into chocolate moulds and leave to set overnight. Turn out the ganache from the moulds onto a silicone mat or piece of greaseproof paper. 2) Leave the mixture to set in the pan for a few hours or overnight. Roll teaspoonfuls of the set ganache into balls and place on a silicone mat or sheet of greaseproof paper.
• Melt the second batch of dark chocolate in a glass bowl suspended over a pan of hot water. Ensure the temperature doesn’t go over 58℃.
  200 g dark chocolate
• Remove from the heat and let it cool down to 29℃.
• Placed it back on the heat and raise the temperature to 32℃.
• Using a fork, dip the ganache pieces or balls into the chocolate and place back on the silicone mat, or paper, to set. Decorate with a sugar flower or a light dusting of edible gold glitter.

Notes

I made fifty four chocolate in total: twenty four moulded and thirty hand rolled balls. How many you make will depend on the size and whether you use chocolate moulds or not.

Use your favourite type of dark chocolate for this recipe. The higher the cocoa content, the richer the result. This can be too intense for some people. If you prefer, you can make the truffle centres with milk chocolate.

Instead of enrobing these truffles with chocolate, you could simple roll truffle balls in cocoa powder. It’s a lot quicker making them this way, but they won’t have quite the same impact.

Please note: calories and other nutritional information are per serving. They’re approximate and will depend on serving size and exact ingredients used. Please refer to my nutrition disclaimer for further information.

Nutrition Estimate

Calories: 70kcal | Carbohydrates: 5g | Protein: 1g | Fat: 6g | Saturated Fat: 3g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 1g | Monounsaturated Fat: 2g | Trans Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 8mg | Sodium: 3mg | Potassium: 62mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 3g | Vitamin A: 83IU | Vitamin C: 1mg | Calcium: 9mg | Iron: 1mg

Tried this recipe?Leave a comment below letting us know how you got on and do share a photo on Instagram. Tag @choclette8 or use hashtag #tinandthyme.

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Dom may have a lot to answer for, but Random Recipes spurred me into action and produced a huge number of chocolate gift boxes, so I will forgive him 😉

I was so sorry to have missed the fabulous Lets Make Christmas gift swap with Vanessa Kimbell and Chantel Coady. So I’m delighted to submit this post to the virtual version and thus play some part in the great chocolate event of the year. Incidentally Vanessa is very excitingly now running a cookery school in Northampton called Juniper & Rose.

With the rosemary playing such an important part in these chocolates, I am also submitting this to Karen’s Herbs on Saturday.

I’m also sharing this recipe for rosemary chocolate truffles with Melissa Traub for #CookBlogShare.