The vegan chocolate truffles were wildly simple: melt 8 ounces of fine bittersweet chocolate with whatever flavors you prefer, add about 1/4 cup chocolate soymilk, and chill until semi-solid. Then use a teaspoon and your warm hands to measure out and mold small truffles, which you can then roll through a plate of cocoa powder or powdered sugar. I think crushed cacao nibs would also have been tasty. In this case, there was much 70% cacao mint-flavored chocolate on hand, and thus the truffles were quite cooling on the hands! Like using Dr. Bronner's soap a little too strong. Dubious-though-tasty truffles:
The mendiant cups - mendiant is a mixture of dried fruits, citrus peels, and nuts somehow combined with chocolate - were also quite easy. If you've got some paper muffin cups laying around, you're pretty much set. We went for dried figs, crystallized ginger slices, slivered toasted almonds, and orange zest as the flavorings for this mendiant. But you could use any tasty combination - sky's the limit. I sliced the ginger and figs thin, toasted the almonds in the microwave (yes indeed!), and grated some orange peel. Then I juiced the orange and combined the juice with orange peel, some sugar to taste, and 2 heaping tablespoons honey. Throw the figs and ginger into the heating syrup, and cook on medium-high until the figs and ginger look a little translucent, and well-coated. Turn off heat, add the nuts, and mix well. Thanks, Bon Appetit!
Then you melt your chocolate - 12 ounces of bittersweet, in this case - in the microwave or over a low flame. Then pour heaping teaspoons of melted chocolate into your muffin cups (arranged on a cookie sheet with raised sides). Arrange pretty dollops of the ginger/fig/almond mixture on top of the chocolate cups, and you have some delicious dark chocolate confections. I love them so much, I might make them again. Chocolaterie, anyone? All I need is a few good investors.
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