5 Japanese inspired Chocolate Truffle Recipes
Easter is upon us and everywhere you look there is chocolate to be seen. I love chocolate with dark chocolate being my favourite and when I was given the opportunity to try some Japanese-inspired Chocolate Truffle recipes I jumped at the chance. The flavours we’re going to make are:
- Miso Caramel – think salted caramel with a twist
- Shaoxing Rice Wine – a warm, boozy hit
- Wasabi Furikake – milder than chili with the added crunch of sesame
- Pickled Sushi Ginger – chocolate & ginger with the surprising tang of pickle
- Yuzu – a hint of citrus
I have to be honest when I received a box of ingredients I was hard-pushed to imagine them paired with chocolate but here goes.
This is the list of items needed to make the truffles:
- Good quality Dark Chocolate
- Double Cream
- Unsalted Butter
- Truffle cases
- Shaoxing rice wine warmed
- Vermicelli
- Yutaka Wasabi Furikake
- Drinking chocolate
- Yutaka sushi ginger
- Cocoa
- Yutaka Yuzu
- White chocolate
- Sugar
- Water
- Yutaka Miso
- Pink salt crystals
Quite an interesting list of items, but this is to make five different flavoured truffles and will make approximately 30 – 36.
Chocolate Easter Truffles Recipe
200g dark good quality chocolate
60ml double cream
80g unsalted butter
Truffle cases
Method for all truffles
In a double saucepan (or a Pyrex bowl in a saucepan), place chocolate, butter, and cream. Heat through slowly until smooth whilst whisking. Remove from heat and divide into 5 equal portions, adding the various flavourings to each individual portion as below. Place in the fridge to set – overnight if possible.
Remove the various truffle mixes from the fridge and, with a teaspoon, scoop out a goodly amount. Roll into a ball and place on a plate (remembering to keeping the various flavours separate) and continue until all the mixture has been used.
Yutaka Shaoxing rice wine flavouring
2 tbs Shaoxing rice wine warmed
Vermicelli for coating
Yutaka Wasabi Furikake flavouring
2 tbs Yutaka Wasabi Furikake
Drinking chocolate for coating
Yutaka Pickled Sushi Ginger flavouring
2 tbs chopped Yutaka sushi ginger
Cocoa for coating
Roll the ginger truffles in cocoa and place in truffle cases. Roll the Wasabi Furikake in drinking chocolate and the rice wine truffles in vermicelli and return to fridge.
Yutaka Yuzu flavouring
2 tsp Yutaka Yuzu
100g white chocolate – gently melted for coating
Using a double boiler (or Pyrex bowl in a saucepan) melt the white chocolate over a low heat and, when removed from the heat & cooled slightly, spoon over Yuzu truffles until coated. You can use a cocktail stick pushed carefully into a truffle to help you turn and coat with the chocolate. This needs patience! Leave them to set on a plate.
Miso caramel sauce filling
75g sugar
25ml water
50ml double cream
1 tbs Yutaka Miso
100g dark chocolate – gently melted for coating
Pink salt crystals for sprinkling on the top
Miso caramel flavouring method
Put sugar and water in a heavy-bottomed saucepan, stir and leave on medium heat, stirring occasionally, until caramel in colour. Carefully add double cream (it will hiss a little) and whisk whilst off the heat, add miso paste and whisk thoroughly until smooth. Add 2 tbs of miso caramel sauce to the remaining truffle mixture. The remainder of the sauce saved and used over ice cream for a delicious dessert.
Melt the dark chocolate and coat the Miso caramel truffles using a cocktail stick pushed carefully into a truffle to help you turn and coat with the chocolate. Sprinkle a couple of pink salt crystals on the top.
We made up the five different flavours and left them in the fridge whilst we went out for the day. Three of them were fairly easy to mold into ball shapes, but the Shaoxing rice wine flavour and the Pickled Sushi Ginger were quite tacky still.
We thought it was quite fun smelling all of the ingredients and wondering how the truffles were going to taste. I thought that the Shaoxing rice wine smelt quite nice. We all agreed that the Wasabi Furikake smelt awful and Daddy and I had a taste of it neat which was a bit of an experience for the tastebuds.
These are our lovely-looking truffles all ready to be tried.
Miso Caramel – We all agreed that it was quite salty, but not in a bad way so this one gets the thumbs up.
Shaoxing Rice Wine – This one was up there as one of our favourites.
Wasabi Furikake – We were all very nervous about this one. We gave it to Ryan without telling him what it was which he wasn’t impressed by. For me this felt like attempting a ‘Bush Tucker Trial’ so I only had a very little taste. Now that we’ve ticked this off our list of tried and tested I don’t think we would go for this one again. Daddy is very keen to use this in savoury cooking though.
Pickled Sushi Ginger – I wasn’t too sure that I would like this one as it seemed like a lot of ginger, but surprisingly it was a nice hit of ginger.
Yuzu – This was up there as our other favourite. I think the white chocolate made this the prettiest one as well.
This was definitely a taste experience for us all which we enjoyed. Which one of the Japanese inspired Chocolate Truffle Recipes would you most like to try?
Lisa x
*We were gifted the ingredients by Yutaka for the purpose of this review but all the opinions are our own. This post may contain affiliate links which means that I receive a small payment should you click the link and make a purchase at no extra cost to yourself.