I really like sweets and try to incorporate things that are sweet into every facet of my life. I do a lot of events for my clients at my main gig, and sweets and chocolate often make their way into my client work in one way or another. So this past weekend, I was at an event that I organized for one of my clients, English tea boutique Whittard of Chelsea, that featured desserts made with Whittard's green teas. The recipes were developed especially for the event by the pastry chef at Boston's revered South End Buttery.

Lee Napoli, the Buttery's pastry chef, was kind enough to supply the event attendees with all of the recipes for the green tea dessert menu that she created. The Green Earl Grey truffles were really fabulous, and demonstrate a concept in truffle-making that can be replicated with many different kinds of flavors and interesting ingredients. Here's the recipe that she gave me for the truffles:

Green Earl Grey Truffles

• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup Whittard Green Earl Grey tea leaves
• 1 pound chopped dark chocolate
• cocoa powder

Place tea leaves and heavy cream in a medium saucepan. Scald heavy cream and tea. Remove from heat and cover with plastic wrap. Let the tea steep in the cream for 30 minutes. Strain out tea leaves and rescald cream. Pour hot mixture over chocolate and whisk until chocolate is fully melted and smooth. Chill chocolate mixture to set.

Scoop chocolate mixture with teaspoon or mini ice cream scoop. Roll each scoop in cocoa to finish.

A quick note on scalding: Scalding is when you heat a liquid - most often milk or cream - until it almost boils. Here's the best practice for scalding from my own experience: Use cream that's at room temperature or close to room temperature to minimize the potential for burning (big temperature differences will give you a higher chance of burning). Use low to medium low heat and stir pretty much constantly. The cream is scalded once small bubbles appear at the edges of the surface.

Steeping the tea in the cream is a flavor infusion method that can be used as the basis for lots of fun experimentation in truffle-making. The recipe above uses Earl Grey green tea, but you can infuse many different flavors into your truffle ganache by steeping the raw ingredients in the cream as it scalds. Here are a few of the ingredients that I've infused this way:

• black tea
  
• lavender
  
• apples (but this one's tricky, because the acidity of the apples can curdle the cream if the apples are too tart, or if the cream is heated too quickly.)
  
• cardamom pods
  
• coffee beans
  
• dried chili peppers and cinnamon bark
  
• vanilla beans
  

Recipe above provided by Lee Napoli of the South End Buttery.