Vosges Chocolate Truffles

The other day, I participated in a hamburger tasting (Andrew Mark Veety's quest to find the best hamburger in St. Louis). One of the tasters was Riverfront Times blogger Kelli Best-Oliver. In writing up the event, she described her perfect restaurant hamburger: "Basically, I want restaurants to make the burger I make at home better than me." If I took this description and applied it to truffles, my perfect truffle would be a Vosges chocolate truffle. While I don't often make truffles at home (OK - I've only made homemade truffles once), Vosges does truffles the way that I would make them myself, only better.

Like my experimental cupcakes, Vosges makes truffles that push the envelope of what you'd expect to find in a dessert.


Vosges sent me their Sweet Coquette Collection for review. In Vosges's own words, "The Sweet Coquette Collection uses chocolate as the medium for illustrating an array of famed aphrodisiacs that drew their histories from various parts of the world." The collection contains truffles with Chinese star anise, rose water, pistachios, oysters, champagne, mamajuana (I had never heard of this drink from the Dominican Republic - it's now on my tasting list), chilies, and more. While you may not like them all, this is definitely the Valentine's Day truffle collection for the adventurous eater.

Do the Vosges Truffles Work as an Aphrodisiac?

;)

Yes, There is a Cupcake Tie-In

Coming up next, you'll see my Ultimate Truffle Cupcakes. The cupcakes feature both these chocolate truffles and truffle honey.

Lavender Pear Cupcakes with Vosges Bianca Ganache: A Tale of Two Groups of Tasters

Lavender Pear Cupcake Warning

If you are going to bring lavender pear cupcakes to a party, do not bring them to someone's house who has just made lavender-scented soap.

My cupcakes and I arrived at a friend's house who just happened to have blocks and blocks of lavender soap sitting out on the table curing. As newbies to the world of culinary lavender, how could my friends help but make an association between the soap and the lavender pear cupcakes? Most of my friends loved the moistness of the cupcakes, but thought:

a) Lavender tastes like soap.
b) The white chocolate frosting looked like gravy.

Bride 2.0 was actually a fan of this cupcake but thought it was too springy for their fall wedding.

Lavender Pear Cupcake Tasters Other Than The Soap Bunch

The second group of cupcake tasters were a group St. Louis food bloggers at a food blogger potluck. The majority of this group were not only familiar with culinary lavender, but were fans of it. This group loved the cupcakes. I can only assume that they were being honest. However, I don't think the bloggers group would have told me if they thought the frosting looked like gravy. That's why I keep my good friends around.

To see all the potluck food and food bloggers eating the food, check out J. Pollack Photography and enter keyword FOODBLOG at the bottom of any page.


Lavender Pear Cupcake Recipe

I created this lavender pear cupcake recipe by adding lavender to the bubbly pear cupcake recipe on Yumsugar. I am reprinting the recipe below with my modification and notes.

makes 24-30 cupcakes

• 2 3/4 C flour
• 1 1/2 t baking soda
• pinch of salt
• 2 sticks of lavender butter (Make this the night before - refer to this lavender butter recipe)
• 2 C sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 t vanilla
• 3 medium sized pears (The Yumsugar recipe said to peel and grate them. I peeled and finely chopped them.)
• 1 C champagne

1. Sift flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
2. Cream butter and sugar until well mixed and airy.
3. Add eggs, one at a time, making sure each is fully incorporated before adding the next.
4. Slowly add in flour mixture a little bit at a time until it is fully incorporated.
5. Stir in vanilla and champagne.
6. Stir in pears.
7. Fill cupcake liners 3/4 full.
8. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until top bounces back when touched.

Vosges Bianca Couture Cocoa Ganache Recipe

For the white chocolate ganache, I used Vosges Bianca Couture Cocoa (No, they did not sponsor this post. I'll always let you know if I get something for free). This cocoa contains Australian lemon myrtle, lavender flowers, vanilla, and white chocolate. I should also explain that it is not traditional cocoa powder. It is little pieces of white chocolate with all the seasonings mixed in. If you enjoy white chocolate (I say this because I don't -- not even when it's particularly good white chocolate like this), you are sure to love this stuff.

It does however cost $17, so use any old white chocolate with some lavender flowers and vanilla if you would prefer.

• 1 box Vosges Bianca Couture Cocoa or 2 C white chocolate chopped into small pieces with 1/2 t of culinary lavender and 1 t of vanilla.
• 1/2 C heavy cream

1. Heat the heavy cream until it just starts to boil.
2. Pour over the chocolate and stir until all the chocolate is melted.
3. Let cool slightly and spread on the cupcakes.

Spring Fruit Sensations Monthly Mingle

I am entering these cupcakes into the Spring Fruit Sensations Monthly Mingle hosted by Eat the Right Stuff. Check there for more spring fruit cooking inspiration.

Naga Bar Cupcakes: The Gestalt Cupcake

I've never been one to really enjoy eating chocolate. I know others of my gender have huge chocolate cravings on a regular basis, but it's just never excited me that much. I've even been to Belgium and tried some of the world's finest, but eh, no big deal. This was the case, until I discovered Vosges chocolates. These chocolate bars (found at Whole Foods for those in STL) are sensational. They come in a variety of creative flavors and tend to mix sweet with spicy. They even come with specific instructions on how to eat them so that you get the full sensory experience. When my husband and I open a bar, we each limit ourselves to one square a day to stretch out the enjoyment of it as long as we can. Anyway, just try one.

My favorite bar is the Naga bar. It contains sweet Indian curry powder, coconut flakes, and deep milk chocolate. Imagine my excitement when I happened upon a cupcake recipe based upon the Naga bar. I decided right then that that had to be the cupcake of the week.

The Naga bar recipe was found on one of my favorite food blogs, Vanilla Garlic.

It sounded fantabulous, however, it had pumpkin in it. My beloved Naga bar does not feature pumpkin. I decided to come up with my own cupcake version of the Naga bar. Don't worry pumpkin lovers, it's nothing personal against pumpkin. You may recall I already made the pumpkin cheesecake cupcakes and there will surely be more adventures in pumpkin to come.

I decided to use a basic coconut cupcake as the base for my cupcake. This was again found on Vanilla Garlic.

I then debated about the frosting. I thought about making a chocolate frosting directly out of the Naga bars. How bad could that be? I even wrote a comment on the Vanilla Garlic blog asking what he thought of the idea. The response brought me back to earth. The reason he hadn't done that was because the bars are $7 each. Did I fail to mention that fact before? Minor detail. You should still try one.

I opted instead for a coconut frosting from chockylit's blog.

But what about the chocolate? I decided to put the chocolate and curry powder into the cupcake itself. However, rather than putting it in the whole cupcake, I wanted to have layers. The top part would be just the coconut cupcake and the bottom would be the coconut cupcake plus chocolate and curry. I had no idea how this would work. Would the two layers just meld together or would I have a distinct line?

Turns out, it worked perfectly. There was a clear line between chocolate and not. The line wasn't smooth, but that's only because I didn't smooth out the chocolate layer before putting the other layer on top of it.

The cupcake cake was as a friend of mine would say a gestalt experience.

Gestalt: A collection of physical, biological, psychological or symbolic entities that creates a unified concept, configuration or pattern which is greater than the sum of its parts.

There were 3 different distinct flavors, the coconut cupcake, the chocolate coconut curry cupcake, and the coconut frosting. Each on it's own was good, but together it was mmm mmm great.

Another interesting thing to note is that it seems to be getting better by the day as the buttery coconut frosting seeps into the top layer of cupcake.

Not sure what to compare the ultimate flavor to, it didn't quite taste like a Naga bar, more like a particularly good marble pound cake topped with coconut and not as buttery.

More detailed baking notes:

• I opted not to put any coconut flakes in the batter. I just put them in the icing. This was partly because I wanted a smooth texture and partly because I wanted my husband to be able to enjoy the cupcakes and he doesn't like coconut flakes.


• In the chocolate half of the batter, I put 1/8 cup of cocoa powder and 1 t of curry powder. I didn't want it to be two chocolatey. I'd had my fill of really rich chocolate the week before.


• The coconut flakes in the icing were actually unsweetened rather than sweetened. That was all they sold at whole foods. It worked fine.


• The chocolate shavings on top of the cupcakes are from none other than a Naga Bar. :)