White Vanilla Chocolate & Butterless Butter Pecan Truffles

Yeah; well. Okay. I told you I would add another recipe to tack more onto that last post. To give you more white chocolatey goodness. Why, oh why? Well.
I was so excited when, in the wee hours of Pinteresting (sigh), I had found a recipe for dairy-free white chocolate. How COOL. It looked so easy, too, that I could sub the sugar for something like coconut crystals or lucuma powder and everything would be hunky-dory.
Wrong.

Ehm.

Well, I don't want to insult the author of the recipe, because their chocolate looked absolutely beautiful. Somehow; though, my following of their recipe did not come out very beautiful at all. Nor did it taste very nice, or much at all like white chocolate. It just tasted kind of like a gritty, hard vanillary lump of sweet. Which really isn't terrible, it's kind of nice as a candy, but it's NOT white chocolate. I need smooooooth.

I took a break and made a cute little gingerbread tree.




Aww!

Then I spent most of the day (aside from caring for my son & housework) going crazy making teeny tiny gingerbread trees. Like, a hundred or so of them, plus a few normal-sized cookies.

AND THEN I MADE WHITE CHOCOLATE AND IT WAS DIVINE.

So I did various other stuff, like working on my son's christmas presents...

BUT THEN THE NEXT DAY
I remelted that chocolate and grabbed the huge loaf of caramel in my fridge that I made in October (the stuff keeps for A.G.E.S. and can be used in a CORNUCOPIA of sweets. It's one of the most ingenious things I've made.) and chopped a gob out of it to shape into little balls with some peanut butter that I had sweetened with date syrup and frozen. Oh you better believe, I got cheeky and double dipped those guys in that white chocolate. Yep. White-chocolate snicker ball bombs, and I took those gingerbread trees and I dipped them in white chocolate too.

AND!

I felt a great need to create something elaborate, something...something meaningful...to recreate something special for a few of the people on my list who probably hadn't tasted it for many years.
So; I laboured intensively, and thus was borne....

BUTTERLESS BUTTER PECAN TRUFFLES, DOUBLE DIPPED IN DAIRY-FREE RAW WHITE CHOCOLATE.

Butterless butter-pecan ganache

1/2 to 2/3 Cup Coconut palm sugar (depending on how sweet you want these-I used 1/2 cup and I think it's perfect, but a bit less sweet than your typical truffle.) 

1/2 Cup Non-dairy cream (I use Ecomil's almond cream. You may use something else, but it may change the flavour for all I know.)

1/4 tsp Salt

110g Chocolate (one batch of the aforementioned chocolate works *perfectly*.)

Chopped pecans-as much as desired (I used about 1/3 pecan-to-chocolate ratio)

1 tsp Arrowroot

1/4 tsp additional lecithin

Bring coconut sugar & nondairy cream to a light boil in a pan and add salt, whisking continuously. Turn off heat and add chocolate, and lecithin. Whisk for several minutes and transfer to a bowl. Refrigerate and use a half-teaspoon measuring spoon to shape truffle balls which when thoroughly chilled, you can then dip in another batch of chocolate to coat.

White vanilla chocolate:

Approx. 100g raw cacao butter

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

2/3 cup lucuma powder (I don't recommend subbing. This lends to it's colour, texture, and flavour which is all important for a recreation.)

1/2 tsp arrowroot powder OR FINELY powdered almond flour OR powdered rice milk 

1/4 tsp lecithin

Pinch vanilla powder (optional, but recommended!)

Slow-melt the cacao butter on the lowest heat possible in a metal pot. The lower the temperature, the better as your chocolate will emulsify better. Add the lecithin and vanilla halfway into melting and stir continuously. When the cacao has fully melted, add the arrowroot and whisk. Add lucuma and vanilla and whisk continuously for several minutes and remove from heat. Re-melt on very very low heat as/and when needed, or pour into moulds to be eaten on it's own (it's delicious on it's own!!)

You'll easily have quite a bit of vanilla-chocolate left over after dipping/double dipping your butterless butter-pecan truffles, so, do what you will with that knowledge. Leave me a comment and tell me how you like it!

Raw eggless eggnog cream cacao candy

I made candy. Lots of candy, for the holidays. Phew. It was far too much work, and I tested many mixtures of ingredients for several days straight, but I found a few gems for recipes that were too good not to save. I like them so much in fact, that I might be making a couple of these next year.

The following recipe is one I am extremely thrilled with. Despite not containing eggs, after setting it quite literally tastes as the nogg I love so dearly from younger years before I became aware of my food sensitivities. The Christmassy creamy flavours of eggnogg, coupled with the texture of chocolate-it's a marriage made in heaven!

As I have been cooking for many years, I often do not use measuring utensils; this is a close approximation and I believe for any recipe to have good results a degree of intuition and care is required. I would also like to note here that there are hundreds of variations to eggnogg from the type of alcohol used to the ratio of spices; and this is a recreation of the eggnogg that I remember so fondly in my own childhood. So feel free to taste as you go along (remember, since this is raw it is slow melting-it shouldn't be too hot to taste test).

Raw eggless eggnog cream cacao candy

110-120 grams cacao butter
2-3 tablespoons grassfed, salted butter
4-5 teaspoons strong vanilla extract (a highly alcoholic, flavourful vanilla is preferable-just add a little more if you only have a milder one at hand)
1 teaspoon almond cream (I use Ecomil's-you may sub regular cream or another nondairy if you prefer, though the taste may vary.)
1 slightly heaped teaspoon arrowroot powder
1/3 teaspoon lecithin (this is to keep the chocolate together, basically.)
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground clove
1/8 tsp cinnamon
About 2/3 Cups Lucuma powder (do not sub! This is essential as it is a thickening agent as well as a sweetener!)

If you have a sensitive gas hob like I do-which is ideal for this recipe-ignite a fire and turn it to the lowest possible flame. Ideally it will be on a setting so low that when you dip your finger in the melted chocolate, you won't be burnt. If you do not have such a hob; there are methods of melting raw cacao, one I believe is to have it in a bowl inside of another bowl of very hot water. One should probably research this, as I am not an expert, since I have a fantastic hob on my oven. Place a large pot on the hob and melt together the cacao and butter, stirring all the time. When they have thoroughly melted; one by one, in order, add the other ingredients in very slowly, stirring as you go along. When everything tastes right, turn off the heat and whisk vigorously for about 5 minutes. Pour into moulds or, like me, a pan lined with baking paper and sprinkled with additional nutmeg for decor. If desired, add chopped pecans/walnuts, chocolate chips, whatever to the candy. Leave covered at room temperature to set overnight. With a very very thin knife, slice into pieces-or break it up with your hands-or just have a gigantic bar of chocolate, ALL TO YOURSELF, bwahahahaha. The photo below is my finished product, broken up, which has plain bits, chocolate chunk bits, and pecan-chunk bits.

Enjoy. Happy Holidays.

Stay tuned, I have a completely dairy-free butter pecan truffle recipe coming soon.

xo