Green Tea Truffles

This truffle recipe was inspired by Francois Payard's recipe for white chocolate-coconut truffles in his book, "Chocolate Epiphany". It's a lovely book with many unusual recipes. The truffles I made are filled with a white chocolate ganache, turned green with matcha powder. Matcha powder is very finely ground green tea. According to Wikipedia, matcha is used in Japanese tea ceremonies and to flavor/color many foods. You can buy matcha in Asian markets or online.

These truffles were really good but I made the chocolate coating too thin and they melted very quickly. You can coat the truffles with dark chocolate or white chocolate, or roll them in matcha. Matcha has a pretty strong flavor so if you don't want to have to melt chocolate and dip the truffles but you aren't keen on a strong green tea taste, you can roll the filling in powdered sugar or cocoa powder.

I would recommend keeping these in the freezer or the fridge as they can get gooey very easily.
Also, if you don't "temper" the coating chocolate the truffles will lose their shine and look chalky. Tempering is a process where you heat and then cool chocolate to very specific temperatures - it makes for pretty, shiny chocolate. I avoid tempering whenever possible as I don't have the patience to be so exacting when melting chocolate. I always seem to be in a huge rush to do everything. If you're interested in learning how to temper chocolate there are many resources online to learn how to do so.

Green Tea Truffles:

7 1/2 ounces white chocolate, chopped
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon heavy cream (I added a tiny bit of extra cream as I did not use the 2 tablespoons of rum that Francois Payard uses in his original recipe)
About 1 teaspoon of matcha, you can add more or less depending on your taste

Coating:

6 ounces melted chocolate, cooled
Or: matcha, or powdered sugar, or cocoa powder

Melt the white chocolate with the cream and corn syrup in a double boiler, stirring until the mixture in smooth. Let the chocolate cool to room temperature and then cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, about an hour or so.

When the filling is firm, scoop out teaspoonsful of the mixture and roll into balls in the palms of your hands. Place each ball on a parchment lined baking sheet. After all the filling is rolled into balls, place back in the fridge.

After they are cooled, dip the ganache balls into melted chocolate or roll in any of the other coatings. Store in the fridge.