Nuggetty Goodness

Dark chocolate base is exactly the same as the hazelnut pistachio strawberry osmanthus truffle bar things, except without hazelnut essence.

I'm not a huge fan of white chocolate (too sweet for me), but a work human really likes these - he took this photo - so I'm plopping the green tea white chocolate part here.

Ingredients

• 50ml sweetened condensed milk (aka 1 part)
• 100g white chocolate (aka 2 parts)
  Broken into squares it comes in. I'm too lazy to do more than that.
• some matcha (about a teaspoon)
  You can get a cheap matcha from an Asian grocery ($5 or so for a small tin). Just make sure it's actually matcha, from Japan, or it will likely be waaaaay too bitter.
  T_T I thought I could be a cheapo-nug and get a 500g bag of green tea powder from Taiwan. Don't do it!!! That stuff is foul.
  Don't use ceremonial matcha (the stuff the ninja ladies in Lustbader books do tea ceremonies with) - other than being very expensive, IMO it's a waste. You lose the umamis and delicate flavours once the white chocolate steamrolls over them.
  

Crafting

1. Dump white chocolate in a bowl.
2. Shove bowl in microwave, melt at half power for 15s.
3. Stir.
4. Repeat Step 2 and 3 until there are just a few nubs of unmelted white chocolate left.
   Should be about 3 - 5 minutes or so of heating in total. Do NOT just set the microwave to half power for 3 minutes and nuke. You need to do the irritating nuke and stir because white chocolate burns very very easily. If you just nuke without stirring, it will burn, and there's no saving it. Well, you could pretend you wanted to 'caramelise' it. XD You can also do all this on a water bath if you want. ;)
5. Stir until the unmelted white chocolate goes away.
6. Plop in condensed milk, stir stir stir till incorporated.
   It will look a bit greasy, don't worry about it. :)
7. Assuming you've also made the dark chocolate bottom, pour that into some kind of (parchment-paper-lined) pan, make pathetic attempt at forming some sort of 'slab'.
8. Plop the green tea white chocolate blob on top, and make a further sad attempt at slabbing it evenly.
9. Decorate in a suitably 'artisanal' fashion.
10. Put gently in fridge (no need to cover unless your fridge has stinky things).
11. Ignore for at least 4 hours.
12. Remoof from fridge, cut into squares.
13. Eat all the leavings that are ~_o 'unfit for presentation'.
    

Ceremonial matcha
I realised I was doing too much matcha-ranting in the ingredients section, so I moved that here...

This matcha is one of my favourite ceremonial matchas, and is great value for money for drinking.

O-cha are great, and buying from them is cheaper (shipping included) than buying matcha locally in Australia. And the quality is amazing.

If you're curious about matcha brewed usucha or koicha style, then I'd advise getting some overpriced and expensive Australian stuff (T2, kenkotea, etc), and only then getting stuff from O-cha. Then you'll really be able to compare a good matcha with a terrible (or badly stored) one. ;)

Pristine Fairy Habitat

This edible fairy garden (EAT ALL THE FAIRIES!) >.> uses exactly the same base as the Hazelnut pistachio strawberry osmanthus truffle bar things.

Except that this time round, for pretties and flavourings we haz:
- rose essence
- vanilla essence
- rose petals (from dried rosebuds for rose tea - some steamed to rehydrate them, some straight off the dry buds)
- freeze-dried peach slice, chopped
- silver sugar ball things (I think they're called 'dragees'. Or maybe 'fairies'. ~_o )
- cheap matcha (nothing you'd want to make koicha, or even usucha with - good enough to cook is good enough)

Am very pleased a nugget at how the blend of flavours turned out. If you like Turkish delight chocolates, this is just the thing, with the peaches adding interesting 'high' notes, and the pistachios adding nice texture. :X The matcha just adds fairy moss.

Blurry Chunks of Sundered Fairy Habitat

Alas, all my pics of the sliced squares turned out blurry. T_T That's what I get for taking pics after sundown!

(If you're in Melbourne, don't bother with T2 matcha. It's bad. You're better off going to any random asian grocery and buying a 50g tin of matcha for $5~. Just make sure it's from Japan, and not a mainland chinese imitation. You'll be getting the same amount of quality, or lack thereof, for a tenth of the T2 price.)

Being the soul of restraint, it's SO unusual for me to go completely mad, and throw in the kitchen sink. Of course it is. Ahem.

1) Hmm wanna make truffles but too lazy to roll balls. Okok let's make truffle bars.
2) Drat, no Nutella, was planning to use that. Ooh but look, hazelnut essence. Ok!
3) Pistachio looks so pretty in choccies, let's throw some in.
4) Hey I have those freeze dried strawberries, and pink is pretty with green. Chop some of those and put them on top!
5) Oo yellow is pretty with pink and I just happen to have dried osmanthus flowers...

And so we have these Hazelnut pistachio strawberry osmanthus truffle bar things.

They are amazing. I don't really like chocolate, I just love how it looks. But in the process of 'squaring' the bars, I've eaten more chocolate than I have in the past 6 months, lol!

Best of all, they're super easy to make (well the base is), and you can throw as many 'pretties' as you like in / on top.

Ingredients
200ml sweetened condensed milk (aka 2 parts)
200g good 70% cocoa dark chocolate (aka 2 parts) (broken into squares it comes in. I'm too lazy to do more than that.)
25g~ honey
25g~ butter (salted, unsalted, doesn't matter. I used salted cause lazy.)
some vanilla essence
some hazelnut essence
some freeze-dried strawberries (chopped)
some osmanthus flowers
some pistachios (whole)

Crafting
1) Dump chocolate, honey, butter in a bowl.
2) Shove bowl in microwave, melt until melted. Until the chocolate and stuff is melted. Not the bowl. If the bowl has melted, you've gone too far. Safest to stop when there are a few lumps of chocolate left, and finish it by stirring it all into a homogenous gloop.
3) Throw in essences, stir stir stir till incorporated.
4) Plop in condensed milk, stir stir stir till incorporated.
5) Mix in pistachios .
6) Pour into some kind of (parchment-paper-lined) pan, make pathetic attempt at forming some sort of 'slab'.
7) Decorate with freeze-dried strawberry pieces and osmanthus flowers in a suitably 'artisanal' fashion.
8) Tos...put gently in fridge (no need to cover unless your fridge has stinky things).
9) Ignore for at least 4 hours.
10) Remoof from fridge, cut into squares.
11) Eat all the leavings that are ~_o 'unfit for presentation'.

Notes
If you want to mess with the ratio of condensed milk to chocolate, more milk will give you softer trufflepieces, more chocolate will give you harder ones (duh right). This ratio gives you pretty much perfect 'fancy truffle' texture. Not too squishy, not too hard, just right.

Soo... after last week's Nutella Balls of DOOM which were too Nutella-ey for the household of Nugget, Bart and Jenna, I vowed to make dark chocolate balls according to *my* idea of what the ratios should be, and not be swayed by the Internets.

...and so here we have...

SPICY DARK CHOCOLATE BALLS OF COCOA-DUSTED DOOM
4 parts sweetened condensed milk (I used one full 400ml tin)
3 parts dark chocolate (75% cocoa)
Lemon juice (probably 2 tbsp)
Dollop of honey (probably 1 tbsp)
Dollop of butter (again probably 1 tbsp, salted or unsalted doesn't matter)
Garam masala spices, ground (to taste)
Cocoa to roll dem balls in

Again, Rice Cooker Disciples, dump chocolate, butter and honey into a bowl, dump the bowl into the rice cooker, and set it on cook until it pops up (which it will when everything is melted enough). If not, go do your water bath thing. *shudder*

After it's all melted together nicely, whisk a bit until you've slain any remaining lumps of chocolate.

Glop in all the condensed milk and lemon juice, whisk it all together.

By now, it should have a very dough-like consistency. If you don't like the idea of spices in chocolate, or you don't like garam masala spices, or you just want dark chocolate truffles, this is when you can dump the mixture in the fridge and ignore it for about 30 minutes. Or at least, that's how long I ignored it for when I went off to kill things.

If you do like the idea of adding ground spices, whisk them in now. Start with small amounts and taste the mixture. Stop adding / whisking in spices when the spice taste is subtle, but not strong. Don't make it strong, because once the truffleys set and the chocolate makes sweet cocoa-love to the spices and it all sets in one gooey mess... er what? Right. Once the chocolate sets and combines with the spices, the taste of the spices roughly doubles in strength. So, in order to get Spicy DARK chocolate truffles, you need to stop when the taste of the spices is subtle. If you don't stop, you'll end up with SPICY dark chocolate truffles (which I did, because I did not, until this experiment, know about the intricacies of choco-spice seks).

Dump the mixture in the fridge to cool for 1-4 hours (depends on how madly cold your fridge is).

Take the mixture out of the fridge. The texture you're looking for is similar to edible chocolate Plasticine. It should be pliable and cookie-dough-like, but still easy to work with.

Dust your hands with cocoa, and make a little ball of dark and spicy chocolate happiness. Roll the little ball of dark and spicy chocolate happiness in the cocoa.

Put all your little balls of spicy dark chocolate happiness rolled in cocoa in the fridge and leave them for 12-36 hours or so.

Then...

...

...

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

***

I really really love the texture of the truffles this time round. It's pretty much the perfect texture after it sets, and it's also really easy to work with. Pliable but not melty or messy.

Next week I shall try version 2.0: Less garam masala, with a roasted coffee bean in the centre.