As promised, for this April’s Gathering Diary Sneak Peeks I’m starting off by sharing this delectable melt in your mouth, spring blossom infused white chocolate truffle. I’ve made sinfully good Plum Blossom Dark Chocolate Truffles for several years now – but this year my sister-in-law made a batch of the chocolate, so I decided to alternately try a white chocolate version. Rich and creamy, I think it brought out the subtle delicate flavours of the Plum and Violet Blossoms beautifully – maybe even better (gasp!) than the dark chocolate version.
Now just a quick note, these plum blossoms are not the standard fruit producing trees, these are the fragrant Ornamental Purple Plum (Prunus cerasifera, Nigra) whose pale pink to white blossoms light up city streets, boulevards and neighborhood lanes. (For more information on identifying this tree see here.) I love that these plum blossoms, which provide the first tremulous signs and scents of spring, transfer their heavenly fragrance so well to cream.
As does the sweet, demure, purple headed Violet odorata whose flavour has been used to infuse chocolate creams for hundreds of years. Violet creams remain one of the British Royal Confectioners biggest sellers, and it has been used for centuries as a key ingredient in perfumes and in love magic to arouse and stir whirlpools of lust.
Violet was sacred to love goddesses Venus and Aphrodite and was used by Roman Courtesans to drive men wild and scent their erogenous zones. (For more on the folklore and identification of Violet, plus a recipe see here).
Gathering plum blossoms is easy. Just grab a branch and pluck the abundant flowers off the slender stems (making sure to leave behind all traces the toxic leaves).For this recipe you’ll feed about ¾ cup loosely packed blossoms. Gathering violets is also pretty simple. Again just pinch the about ¾ of a cup flower heads off the stems and pile them into a container. I infused the whole flower heads in the cream (after a little muddling or rough chopping) but those blossoms mixed directly into the white chocolate, I removed each petal separately.
These will be minced before going directly into the mixture, so they need to be small. But you will do this after you infuse the rest of the blossoms in cream – these will be strained out later.
The rest of the process pretty simple too – and I guarantee that you will be well rewarded for minimal effort! But better act fast! Already here in Victoria the falling blossoms are already rendering sidewalks snowy pink, and while the violets have a little time left, they will likely cease blooming in a month. So if you’d like to try these divine Truffles you need to get harvesting, this is one sweet taste sensation you don’t want to miss!
Hi there! Is it possible to use just plain plum blossoms (not the ornamental ones)?
Hi Nora! Yes you could – do they have same delicious fragrance? Some people say yes they do – but I haven’t tried. So be warned you may not get any flavor…but don’t worry, a violet white chocolate truffle would stand on it’s own just fine!
Great! thanks.
Decadent. Truly decadent! 😀