Hello December! What a beautiful first day of Summer!
Asiatics are in full bloom, Calla's are on their way up and I have little bean seedlings planted and hopefully about to come up in my little seedling tray out in the garden shed! woohoo!
Life is delicious today....especially since I just made some healthy(ish) chocolate truffles!

Oh YES.

Now I'll try give you the recipe, but to be honest I was experimenting and hoping for the best so I'll give you my best measurements from memory...just tweak them slightly if its not coming together. Just add more of the wet ingredients if its not binding together into nice firm balls.... (I may have giggled just then...sorry sorry, I try to be a grown up most of the time)

Ingredients: 

• 1 C LSA (ground linseed, sunflower seeds and almonds) or just ground almonds will work too if you dont have LSA...you can actually make LSA pretty easily in a really good blender or food processor, just thought I'd mention that before you get caught out (like I did) buying it at the price of diamonds from the healthfood stores haha)
• 4 Tablespoons natural peanut butter
• 2 tsp vanilla extract with seeds (essence is a no no in my books, but go ahead if you haven't got the real stuff, we cant all be fuss pots like me :P )
• Nowwww I squeezed a bit of honey in...I dont really know how much...maybeee 1 tablespoon maybe 1 and a half? not really sure, so maybe just squeeze a bit in and see how you do, not too much, we dont want them to be really sweet and we dont want them to be uber sticky when you go to roll them.
• 3 heaped tsp unsweetened cocoa
• 1 splash hot water (i used a splash out of a just boiled kettle) this is just to moisten the mixture to make it easy to roll but if its the right texture to roll dont worry about it.
• Annnd about 150g of dark (I'm talkin the uber dark bittersweet 72% cocoa, dark chocolate, not this pansy "dark" chocolate that Cadbury puts out lol) 

Method: 

1. Soooo basically just combine everything above except for the dark chocolate and roll it into balls.
2. Grab a heatproof bowl and a small pot, chuck some water in the pot (just a wee bit) throw that baby on the stove top and get it boiling. Put the bowl on top (preferably a bowl bigger than the pot cause you don't want the bowl to touch the water in the pot) and put your chocolate all broken up, in the bowl to get melty. Alternatively you can melt it in the microwave, but I have never succeeded with this method, it always ends up going past being melted and cooks into a burnt gross turd looking lump...so I don't recommend doing it that way, but hey you might be a microwave pro, in which case, go for your life!
3. Now your chocolate is a melty puddle of glossy goodness, dip/roll/whatever your truffle mixture in the chocolate and place on a nonstick baking sheet then put in the fridge to set, or freezer if you are impatient like me! ...Don't ask me how to get a nice smooth coating, cause I haven't mastered that either, and i kinda like the rustic (yeah that's right I'm dropping a "rustic" bomb...which is really just messy, dressed up)
   And voila, kind of healthy truffles! ...come on we all know dark chocolate is good for you...antioxidants or something something :D
   Well my 3 year old miss muffit and hubster loved them so that's a win in my view!
   have a go, get messy (or RUSTIC!) and if you feel so inclined, leave me a comment and tell me how yours turned out. Maybe create your own version, add chopped up apricots or something?? I dont know, but I'd love to hear what you tried!

Back to flowers...here are my lovely Asiatic lilies making a stunning appearance in my front yard!

Callas are shooting up, not long now until the first flowers come out I should hope!

So back in May I sent my wonderful Mummy a Rose plant for Mothers day called "Mum in a Million"

Now of course May in NZ is not rose flowering season, so what turned up to my mums place was a stumpy little pruned rose plant...not much to look at...BUT NOWWW ooooh lala, this rose is stunning. She said it has a devine purfume which wafts all through her courtyard and into the sunroom. Yum yum! Gotta get me some roses growing I think. *credit goes to my Dad for the rose photos*

Ok, well that about covers it for this entry

For now, be delicious, get summery, stay beautiful! x