Hojicha Truffles

Have you ever tried hojicha? It is a delightful roasted green tea and while I love to drink it, I’ve always thought the flavor would make a great addition to sweets!

Hojicha has such a rich flavor I thought that truffles would make a great combo. Instead of infusing the tea into the truffles I decided to make powder of it.

I used the hojicha gold powder from Hojicha Co. but they also sell a powder if you’d like to skip the crushing!

I crushed the hojicha and walnuts with a mortar and pestle and then mixed it with the chopped chocolate!

Truffles are so easy to make, all you need to do is heat the heavy cream and pour them over the chocolate. After letting the chocolate and heavy cream sit for a few minutes, mix well and refrigerate for several hours until solid.

Once the truffles are solidified, take a tablespoon or whatever size you want your truffles and round them out. You can roll the truffles in whatever topping you’d like. I chose coconut! I thought that coconut and the nutty flavor of the hojicha + walnut flavor would go well together.

These truffles are so rich and delicious!

Make sure to use a real chocolate bar instead of chocolate chips. It is so much easier to get smooth truffles this way!

A fair warning, if you do use nuts these will have a little bit of crunch :)

Tiramisu Truffles

Unicorn Truffles. 

If you saw my post about the Sips by subscription box, know that I have a bunch of interesting teas to work with! Although truffles are pretty simple and classic, I couldn't resist using the Pinky Up Tiramisu blend to make truffles. With black tea, cocoa, white chocolate, cinnamon and a few coffee beans, how could I not make truffles?!

These take time to make due to refrigeration time but they are so so simple! What you end up with is a perfectly chocolate packed little ball. The tiramisu tea adds that black tea flavor and the cinnamon is an excellent addition to this classic dessert.  

Lesson Learned: Chop, chop chop that chocolate up! I'm not sure what I was thinking leaving it that large. smaller pieces will melt a lot easier and your mixing arm will thank you! 

Rolling: Even though the truffle mixture had been in the refrigerator for hours and had solidified, it melted FAST! I would suggest cooling whatever instrument you use to scoop out the balls to help slow the melting a little bit. 

When choosing your rolling topping, I think you should be a little adventurous! Cocoa is a very common coating but these truffles are hardcore chocolate flavored. Adding in a different type of coating gives them more depth in the flavor department.

As you can see I used some fun sprinkles to roll the majority of my truffles. These are of course from my favorite sprinkle shop, Tiny Kitchen Treats! She not only makes fun names for all of her sprinkles but they actually TASTE good. They taste real. A lot of sprinkles I've bought from the store have a strange flavor to them. 

The tiramisu tea was excellent in these truffles, it was almost like biting into a piece of tiramisu. Flavors were more dominated by chocolate but the notes of coffee were there. This blend has both black tea and coffee so it smells AMAZING and your truffles will hold that aroma as well. Make sure that when you're heating the cream with the tea that you let it get hot enough that the cream is actually brewing the tea or the entire addition of the tea is pointless.  

If you could roll your truffles in whatever flavor you wanted, what would it be?!