Text
Meyer Lemon Springthyme Truffles
It’s spring. You know what that means? Meyer lemons are in season! Woo hoo! To commemorate the arrival of spring we’re making meyer lemon & thyme truffles (you’ll soon realize we can’t resist a corny play on words).
Bittersweet chocolate ganache is infused with meyer lemons and thyme, coated in a dark chocolate couveture (or not), then rolled in confectioners sugar. The result is a sweet, slightly tart, herbaceous truffle.
This recipe has been tailored to the home cook with annotations added for the more ambitious home confectioner.
Yield: 40 truffles
Ganache Ingredients
6 oz dark chocolate (170g)
1.4 oz milk chocolate (40g)
3 Meyer lemons juiced, strained (90g juice)
Zest of one Meyer lemon
½ C heavy whipping cream (100g)
1.5 Tb butter, at room temp (20g)
1.5 Tb honey (or invert sugar 20g)
10 sprigs thyme, more if desired
1.5 C confectioner’s sugar, or snow sugar (available at Chef Rubber)
Do your best to work in a cool, dry environment, preferably 70 degrees.
- Heat thyme in a small saucepan with 1 tsp. of water. Heat until most of the water has evaporated & thyme is bright green, about 2 minutes. Water helps extract flavors from the thyme so the cream doesn’t have to do all the work.
- Add the cream and zest to the saucepan. Heat until cream just starts to boil. You will see bubbles start to form around the outer edges of the cream. Remove from heat. Place in a glass bowl and steep cream and thyme mixture for 30 mins.
- Bring lemon juice to a boil. Reduce lemon juice by 2/3, or until you have about 30g. of lemon concentrate. Remove from heat & set aside.
- Chop chocolate as finely as possible in order to prevent clumping during the following melting process
- Strain cream over chocolate. Stir briefly and let this chocolate mixture sit for 2 minutes, letting the cream melt the chocolate. After two minutes, whisk ganache until smooth. Warm lemon juice to about 90 degrees; then pour into ganache. Whisk together, making sure to incorporate as little air as possible. If you notice clumps in your chocolate, heat ever-so-slightly with a heat gun and whisk. Clumps should disappear.
- Add honey, and whisk until incorporated. Add butter, then whisk until incorporated. Now the ganache is finished! Transfer ganache to a Ziploc bag or disposable piping bag (make sure the bag hasn’t been cut yet) and seal the top. Let ganache sit in this bag for 15 mins.
- After 15 minutes, when the ganache feels a little less viscous than playdough, the ganache is ready to pipe. If the ganache feels too thick to pipe, warm ganache with your hands until it reaches a thinner playdough consistency…. Like playdough that has been thinned down with a tiny bit of water.
- Line a tray with parchment. Move ganache into one corner of your Ziploc bag, or if you’re using a disposable piping bag, move the ganache to the bottom the bag. Twist the top of the bag to prevent the ganache from moving up to the top while piping. Snip a ¼” hole in the corner of the bag. Pipe ganache into mounds of equal size, making them as spherical as possible.
- Let these mounds sit at room temperature overnight, then quickly roll each mound between your hands to create a perfect spherical shape. Now you can toss your truffles in confectioner’s sugar or snow sugar (available at Chef Rubber), or you can coat your truffles in tempered chocolate!
- If coating in tempered chocolate, spoon chocolate into your hand. Place a truffle directly into the chocolate in your hand and use your hand to quickly coat the truffle in chocolate. Deposit onto a clean tray lined with parchment paper. Truffles such as these need two coats of chocolate to ensure the shell does not break. The chocolate coating will need 2-3 minutes to set, so when you’re done coating your last truffles with their first coat, the first truffles coated should be ready for their second coat.
- Repeat the process of coating the truffles, but this time deposit your truffles in a bowl of confectioner’s or snow sugar. While the chocolate is still “wet” cover the truffles completely in the sugar. Working in batches of 5-6 truffles at this stage is best.
Our finished truffles presented with a Meyer lemon mojito.
Meyer Lemon Mojito
Yield 1 mojito
Ingredients:
1/2 oz. Darbo Elder Flower Syrup
6-8 Mint leaves
1/2 Meyer lemon, cut into wedges
2 oz. Aged dark rum
Club soda
- Muddle the first three ingredients together. Add rum. Shake. Pour over ice & top off with club soda.
