Vegan Earl Grey Chocolate Truffles

I love to make truffles and really wanted to make a couple of tea themed truffle recipes for Mofo. Check out my White Chocolate and Matcha Green Tea Truffles as well. I based this recipe on this one I found at Epicurious, veganising it and adding the orange zest as it's a good compliment to the bergamot orange flavouring in the Earl Grey. This would be great made with loose tea leaves but it also works well with a high quality teabag such as Pukka's Gorgeous Earl Grey which also has added lavender, another flavour that works fantastically well with Earl Grey.

Ingredients

Makes about 30 truffles

2/3 cup of soya cream
2 tablespoons of vegan margarine
2 teaspoons of loose leaf Earl Grey tea or the contents of 2 good quality teabags
6oz of good dark chocolate
1 teaspoon of grated orange zest
Powdered chocolate for rolling the truffles

Method

Heat the margarine and cream in a pan until melted. Stir in the tea and leave for 5 minutes.

Whilst the tea mixture is steeping, whiz the chocolate up in a food processor to form a powder. Place in a bowl.

Sieve the cream mixture through a fine sieve or tea strainer onto the chocolate and stir until the chocolate is dissolved. Stir in the orange zest.

If you have any problems with the chocolate dissolving just pop the bowl in a pan of hot water and stir until melted. I made half the recipe and the cream mixture cooled quickly. This sorted it out.

Place the resulting chocolate ganache mixture in the fridge for a couple of hours or overnight.

Take teaspoons of the mixture and roll into balls then roll the balls in powdered cocoa powder. Serve in miniature cases.