Lavender Lemonade Truffles

This is a wonderful truffle recipe just in time for Easter!

Having owned and run my own chocolate business, I have many truffle recipes that would be suitable for Easter...chocolate peanut butter being at the top of the list. I am an avid Pinterest user though, and it seems like every other recipe for Easter is something chocolate peanut butter. I will admit, chocolate and peanut butter is a genius combination, but there is so much more to Easter flavor!

So I am putting my Lavender Lemonade recipe into action! This is a good one folks. One of my top flavors at Zest Chocolat (my chocolate business) was dark chocolate lavender. This recipe plays off of that top flavor.

One would think that white chocolate may be a better carrier for lavender and lemon, but I have chosen a dark chocolate. Yes, dark chocolate is my favorite, but it also goes really well with these flavors. It turns the truffle into something far more mature and exciting. This isn't your average Easter candy, it is one that plays off of light and dark, off spring and winter, off zesty and subtle.

But enough about the flavors and types of chocolate...lets get to the recipe already!

Lavender Lemonade Truffles (recipe yields 20-25 truffles)
-8 oz. dark chocolate finely chopped
(you can use chocolate chips or broken chocolate bars. I use Guittard chocolate because I am a chocolate snob...I buy it in 10lb. blocks.)
-2 Tablespoons butter
-4 Tablespoons heavy whipping cream
-1 Tablespoon grated lemon zest
-1 Tablespoon lavender buds (a lot of organic stores carry lavender buds)
-a fine sieve 

In a small saucepan combine butter, cream, lemon zest, and lavender buds. On low heat continually mix. Let the mixture come to a rolling boil and take it off the heat. Pour everything through a sieve to sift out the lemon zest and lavender buds. Make sure to push all of the liquid through the sieve. Pour the liquid back into the sauce pan and heat it up again. Once heated, turn the heat off and add the finely chopped chocolate. Mix the chocolate in until all of it is melted. This is now called a ganache. Pour the ganache into a bowl and let it sit overnight...or about 5 hours. (Do not refrigerate.) Once the ganache has hardened, scoop out 1" sized balls, roll them in the palm of your hands and then roll them in chocolate sprinkles, sugar, or cocoa powder.

Let the children have their Easter egg hunts and yellow peeps while you sit back and enjoy a dark Lavender Lemonade truffle. You may just have to hide these truffles and save them for a private moment later. ...And if you like this recipe stay tuned for more, I have a truffle cookbook in the works!

Jamie's Nursery Rhyme Themed Baby Shower Part 2

Here is the other table setup we did for Jamie's shower. (You can see the first table setup in our last blog post here and if you scroll to the bottom of this post you can see how they both looked together in the room.) The focal point for this table was the chalkboard. Jamie's husband, Josh, built this one for me the same way I built the one in our dining room. You can see the tutorial for it here. This time I painted it in Ashley Gray instead of staining it and then had some fun adding part of a nursery rhyme to it.

Here is the left side of the table:

We dipped pretzels into white chocolate that we tinted to a grayish purple color and added some white sprinkles and for the cream cheese frosted cupcakes we added some Little Bo Peep silhouettes (we will be selling those in our shop in the very near future). On the cupcakes on the other side of the cake we added little lamb silhouettes.

And here is the right side of the table:

In case you hadn't noticed yet, =) I LOVE the striped straws by the TomKat Studio. I have purchased them now in brown, pink, gray and light purple.  I got the little plant holder this summer in Peterborough, NH at a store called Collections at Laurel and Grove and for the party is made a great little holder for the plastic spoons and forks as well as white chocolate covered pretzels, straws and later for pens for people to use when filling out some of the cards we had laid around (I'll post more about that in a minute).

We got all of the flowers from a shop called Country Fresh Flowers and Goods. They were all gorgeous!

Along with the Storytime and Baby Druke Cards (the downloadable ones say Baby Guesses) we also had a Wishes for Baby card. We are now selling these as printables in a set of three. Along with lavender we are also offering them in blue, pink and brown!

Our pages we used for the banner and also the "Hickory dickory dock..." printout are now available to download and print as well! You can find all of the detailed photos of this table in our last post.

And here are a few pictures from the actual shower (like everyone in our family, Jamie gets embarrassed with everyone just watching her so she asked Lillie, Lola and Abby to help her open her gifts):

 

 Have a wonderful Tuesday!

Jamie's Nursery Rhyme Themed Baby Shower Part 1

Well, I finally finished going through all the photos from Jamie's baby shower. I took quite a few and even after weeding through them and picking just a small percentage to edit I think it would still be too many pictures for one post so I am going to split it up into two. Today I will show you the smaller table setup and then next I'll show you the larger table setup. 

Jamie wanted to do a subtle nursery rhyme theme in her nursery. She's decorating her nursery in a gray and lavender color scheme so we decided to incorporate the same theme for her baby shower. As usual, to help keep costs down, with lots of help from my mom and sisters we tried to make as many things as we could. We will be offering several items in our shop as downloads including the pages to make the banner as well as cutouts and several fun print outs that I will share in the next post.

Our biggest splurge by far was the favors. We had little white chocolate mice from Burdick's.  We took a few out of their pretty packaging and placed them in front of a page we printed out with the "Hickory, dickory, dock..." nursery rhyme and added a silhouette we drew and cutout.

My mom made the delicious cake pops and she and Lillie made the cookies as well. 

The large clock in the back was the focal point of this table and helped both with the whole "Storytime" feel as well as the "Hickory, dickory, dock..." vignette in front of it. 

The adorable little purple and white striped cups on the bottom shelf are from the TomKat Studio. I have a few more things from them on the table I will show you tomorrow. I LOVE their stuff!

 

I hope you all have a wonderful week! I'll be back with more pictures either tomorrow or Tuesday!