Meet lucuma. A spoonful of this silky smooth Peruvian fruit is enough to incite poetry in Jeremy Clarkson.
We team lucuma with hazelnut butter to make these outrageously tasty white chocolates. (Was that a teensy squeal?)
When dried, lucuma is a cracking way of naturally sweetening desserts. You’ll also get a surprising dose of niacin (vitamin B3) to help crusade against cholesterol and depression. What a thoughtful gift for Mother’s Day, eh?
Lucuma is not always easy to find in stores, so I recommend ordering online or with your local health food supplier. It tastes like butterscotch vanilla. Think of it as a unique flavour rather than a straight-up sweetener. Your wallet will thank you.
White Chocolate Truffles
Cacao butter gives chocolate its mesmerizing call, and not the dark cacao pigment as is generally assumed. This tree butter is cream in colour, rock solid at room temperature, and intoxicatingly perfumed. One tablespoon, melted, will amplify any chocolate recipe and send your serotonin to another galaxy. Without it, you’d only reach the clouds.
Cacao butter may require a little sat navving. I get mine online, where I can bulkbuy an artillery of scrummy stuff (like lucuma) without having to leave my lazy armchair. Makes approximately 36 truffles, which will happily live in the freezer.
1/3 cup cacao butter, melted (85ml)
3/4 cup hazelnut butter (185ml)
8 tablespoons brown rice syrup or 6 tablespoons maple syrup
2 tablespoons hot water
3 tablespoons lucuma powder
Pinch of pink Himalayan salt
Lucuma powder to dust
Melt the butter in a bain marie. All this means is placing the broken shards of butter in a shallow bowl over a pan of barely simmering water. Make sure the bowl is at least 4 inches above the simmering water. Remove from heat, and let the butter naturally melt over the hot water for 5 minutes.
Blitz the remaining ingredients in a mini electric blender or food processor. Keep the motor running, and slowly add the melted cacao butter in a steady stream.
Refrigerate this gooey glossy mix in the same bowl, with the blade, for about 3 hours. You should be able to make about 30-40 truffles from the batch. If the mixture seems too hard, or you’ve forgotten about it in the fridge, blitz it again to loosen it up.
Using a teaspoon, take a teeny amount and form a bon bon between the palms of your hands. Drop into lucuma powder and roll again with dry fingertips. Store in the fridge until the munchies hit. Happy Mother’s Day to Me!
