Salted Caramel Cordyceps Truffles

These smooth, caramelly truffles are a total delight. They have a rich, complex flavour and are incredibly more-ish! Unlike traditional truffles, these are of course made using wholesome ingredients with wonderful, beneficial properties. The guest star is cordyceps. A powerful medicinal mushroom that takes us from truffles to truffles.

Used in Chinese medicine for centuries, cordyceps is an incredible mushroom native to the Tibetan plateau. It’s used to treat a plethora of health conditions (including respiratory disorders such as asthma). Cordyceps is also a powerful antioxidant, improves immunity and helps to fight inflammation. Being an adaptogen, it is able to relieve stress and lower cortisol levels. It is perhaps best known for improving athletic performance as it has been shown to boost energy levels and improve endurance. In the 1993 Beijing athletic games, suspicions arose when world records were broken by 3 of the Chinese track and field team. However, drugs tests showed no signs of illegal substance use. Instead it turned out that their secret had been a humble cordyceps elixir! There are so many incredible benefits of cordyceps, I urge you to go off down a google rabbit hole and be amazed. Check out the Hybrid Herbs website for more info. This is where I get my cordyceps.

The process for making these truffles is really very simple. The only difficult bit is waiting for them to set in the fridge. We start by making a delicious, raw caramel (for which you really will need a decent blender), which is then added to a dry mix of oats, cordyceps powder and coconut flour to make a kind of caramel dough. This gets rolled into truffles and then lightly coated with cacao.

Off you go then, my loves.

Ingredients

1/2 cup cashews - washed but not soaked

1/4 cup cacao butter

1.5 tablespoons coconut oil

1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon liquid sweetener such as maple syrup or coconut nectar

1 tablespoon lucuma powder

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon vanilla powder or 2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1 1/2 teaspoons mesquite powder

1 cup oats blended into a flour (gluten free if required)

2 tablespoons coconut flour

3 1/2 teaspoons cordyceps powder (I get mine from Hybrid Herbs)

cacao powder for rolling at the end

Method

You will need a high powered blender such as a Vitamix or equivalent.

Add everything to your blender apart from the oats, coconut flour, cordyceps and cacao and blend until you have a smooth caramel. The cacao butter should melt from the heat generated by your blender (remember to keep an eye on the temperature if you want your truffles to remain raw. Don’t let the mixture go above 42 degrees C). If you don’t think you can achieve this, you can gently melt the cacao butter and coconut oil separately over a bain-marie.

Add your ground up oats, coconut flour and cordyceps to a mixing bowl and pour over your caramel mixture.

At first, use a spoon to mix everything together. I find that after a while I use my hands and almost knead the mixture like dough to bring it together.

On a small plate, put out a few spoonfuls of cacao powder.

You can now carefully roll your truffle dough into 21 balls (so that you can make them portions of 3 which will equate to 1/2 teaspoon of cordyceps per portion).

To finish them off, roll each one in a little cacao until you have coated the surface.

Put your truffles on a plate on some parchment paper and allow them to set in the fridge.

The recommended serving of cordyceps is around 1/2 teaspoon, so in this case, that would be 3 truffles.