Three decadent, rich and creamy Chocolate Truffles Recipes: Dark chocolate with cardamom or lavender and white chocolate with lemon and pistachios.

Preparing for Valentine’s day, I made these three amazing kinds of chocolate truffles to give to my husband. He is actually quite lucky because he will receive them later on today, two days before the Valentine’s day. It took me a while to make them but that’s just because I wanted three different kinds. If you only make one, it goes way faster. You just need to do some preparation work, put your chocolate in the fridge, wait for 1-2 hours, shape the chocolate truffles and roll them in cocoa powder or ground chocolate. If you will make the white chocolate hearts, you are ready to go without shaping and rolling which saves a lot of time. Put them in a nice box and you have a nice gift for Valentine’s day (or any other day) that no one can resist.

My husband is a big chocolate fan who also likes handmade gifts, so I couldn’t come up with a better idea than that. I put them in layers separated by paper in a nice little box, so that when he opens it, there is only one kind of truffles on top, but as he searches deeper in the box, he finds two more layers. I think it’s a pretty good idea for a gift, much better than a ready-made box of pralines. I think it’s always nice to show the most important person in your life how much you care by doing small things that put smile on his/her face.

So, today I’m sharing with you three recipes of chocolate truffles:

1.Dark Chocolate Truffles with Cardamom and Herbal Liquer

I came up with these chocolate truffles because I always thought that cardamom and chocolate should pair well together but I’ve never tried it yet. It turns out that I was right, it tastes just as I expected! I used the darkest chocolate I could find in the store, which has 85% cocoa but in case it’s hard for you to find, 70 % or so would work just fine. Bittersweet chocolate with a bit of cream, green and black cardamom with its smoky flavor and a hint of herbal liquer. Now after I put it into words, it sounds like a very manly type of chocolate to me 🙂 Feel free to use any herbal liquer, as well as whisky or rum. I had Riga Black Balsam, but I know that it’s pretty hard to find outside Latvia, where I got it from. But if you happen to have it, then go ahead and put it into use!

2. Dark Chocolate Truffles with Lavender and Honey

I couldn’t wait to put my dried lavender into use and here I am using it in this recipe which is by the way so delicious you wouldn’t believe it! The addition of honey makes the dark chocolate even sweeter. I came up with a nice coating made of ground chocolate and lavender. You can make it with by yourself by finely chopping chocolate with a knife or you can use a ready made ground chocolate like that. Lavender is a great ingredient to use in cooking, it makes so many things taste better. You can check the recipe of my tomato soup with lavender, as well as other ways to use lavender in your cooking here.

3. White Chocolate Hearts with Lemon, Pistachios and Black Pepper

This is the easiest and the sweetest of all the three kinds of chocolate truffles and it’ not actually a truffle. You basically infuse lemon zest and juice, pistachios and ground black pepper into melted white chocolate, pour it in a form and let it stand for 1.5 – 2 hours in the freezer. I had a heart-shaped form from some packaged chocolate candies. You can use any shape you want. In fact, you can also make a chocolate bar out of it if you pour it in a rectangular or square-shaped form. This chocolate has a very sweet and distinctive lemon flavor with a little astringency of the peppercorns and a nice crunch of pistachios.

All three of them are so delicious it was hard not to eat them all while making 🙂 Check the recipes below for directions and enjoy yourself being a real chocolatier!