Continuing with my Christmas food challenges, "Grow Your Own" is a monthly food blogging event hatched by Andrea of "Andrea's Recipes", that "celebrates the foods that we grow ourselves and the dishes we make using our homegrown products."
But what's growing in frosty Kansas in November, you ask? Well, truthfully, in my garden there isn't much. However, my trusty little rosemary bush is trooping along still--and, if anything, has improved in flavor with the cold--so I decided I wanted to work it into my Christmas candy making somehow.
I love rosemary and I love chocolate, but I only learned that I like them together about a year ago when I had my first Christopher Elbow Rosemary Caramel. It's an odd sounding flavor combination, I know, but somehow it works.
After doing a little research, I ended up mixing a little bit of this recipe with a little bit of this one to get these:
Although I was basically working by trial and error, the flavoring ended up just right. You can just taste the perfect hint of rosemary on the front end and then you get a nice dose of orange. I put the little pieces of candied orange on top for pretty, but I don't know if I would do it again as it kind of messes with the texture when it's all in your mouth. For the recipe, read on. For the round-up of all the recipes that were submitted, click here.
Ingredients
- approximately 48 ounces chocolate chips (semi-sweet or dark)
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1 tablespoon orange extract
- approximately 1/3 cup chopped fresh rosemary
Directions
Add chopped rosemary and orange extract to cream in a small saucepan. Bring cream to a simmer, then set aside for 5 minutes. Strain cream to remove rosemary pieces. Put half of chocolate chips in the top of a double boiler and heat. Add cream and butter, and stir until chocolate is melted. Remove from heat, and pour into a shallow baking dish. Put in freezer for about 30 minutes, or until it sets up enough to scoop.
Scoop chocolate onto a baking sheet with a melon baller or spoon. You probably won't be able to make nice round balls, but the point is just to get the chocolate into separate pieces. Put back in the fridge or freezer for about 30 minutes. Take each piece of chocolate and quickly roll it between your hands to make it round. At this point you could just roll the balls in cocoa powder and call it good, or...
Melt the remaining chocolate chips in a double boiler. Using a toothpick or skewer, dip each chocolate ball in the melted chocolate to coat. Place on wax paper. Using a spoon and working quickly, drizzle more melted chocolate over the tops of your truffles to fill the holes left by the skewer. If you want to add something pretty to the top, press it in while the chocolate is still hot.
