I live very close to Quebec’s second-largest lavender production field. They make so many products derived from it but very few comestibles. I’ve had lavender/honey ice cream and it’s really good so was curious if we can turn it out into chocolate.The solution is to create a ganache and then simply dip them into tempered chocolate. The result is amazing.
Shall we get to it?
You need
- 105g heavy cream ( 35%) + a little bit extra
- 1tbsp dried lavender flowers
- 29g corn syrup
- 15g room temperature butter
- 200g dark chocolate + extra chocolate for the tempering
Instructions
- In a pot bring to a boil the lavender flowers and the cream, turn off heat, cover, and let it sit for about 5 minutes. We need to remove the flowers from the mix, I’m doing so using a chinois strainer but one could use a clean dishcloth to filter them out. With the leftover flowers, I press them very hard to get all the cream and flavor out of them. In the process you have lost about 10% of the cream, simply re-add some to the mix until you are back to 105g.
- Start tempering the chocolate following these instructions.
- While you wait, you can pour back the lavender cream into a pot with the corn syrup. Bring it to a near boil while mixing then let it cool.
- Once you have your tempered chocolate, bring it back to 90F and mix in the butter. Once there is no chunk left, pour the lavender cream in and mix thoroughly for a few minutes. Scrape the side and make sure it’s well combined. It should have a nice sheen to it.
- Pour the mixture into a container and using a spatula flatten it to the desired height you need. Cover directly on the ganache with plastic film and let rest for at least 12 hours at room temperature. This will allow the mixture to crystalize.
- Remove the plastic film.
- Again, redo some tempered chocolate. A nice tip is to coat the whole top with chocolate and then cut it to the desired size. You can then dip the whole chocolate into the tempered one. This allows you to have a solid surface on the chocolate to work with.
Adapted from Peter Greweling book “Chocolates and confections” . If you have an interest in learning in depth about chocolate theory I strongly recommend you buy his book .