Shizuoka matcha nama choco

Valentine’s Day is tomorrow at the time of writing. Typically in Japan girls give guys chocolate showing them how much they love them. To add some extra "luv" to the mix they often arrange the chocolate themselves - possibly in the form of baking that and cookies, or melting the chocolate and decorating it, or the most typical way you’ll see in Japan is turning it into "nama choco," raw chocolate. It’s just chocolate but I think the raw part comes from the fact that you just add whipping cream ("nama kuriimu" i.e. raw cream) into the chocolate to make a ganache that you then solidify and cut into cubes.  In the states I think we would make the same thing but then we would turn them into round balls coated in sprinkles or other kind of toppings.

I decided this year that I would make myself some “raw” matcha chocolate. I was not totally sure how this would turn out. Making chocolate ganache is not too difficult. I’ve done it several times with success.  But there have been a few times where I’ve messed it up - I've added a little bit too much cream and it never set up, accidentally got water into the mixture so the chocolate and the oil separated and another time where I actually burnt the chocolate.  

I picked up some Shizuoka matcha chocolate wafers. I did a post about them before, talking about all the health benefits among others.

I knew that they had a strong enough flavor that even if I mixed it with some white chocolate, I would still be able to get a nice Shizuoka matcha flavoring. So that’s what I did. 

Pack of Shimada town chocolate - 35g

One white chocolate bar - 45g

Heavy whipping cream - 50g

First I made a double boiler on my stove by adding water to a small pot and using a metal bowl to hold the cream. Normal truffles typically require a 1:2 ratio of cream to chocolate so that’s sort of how I figured out the amount of cream that I would need. The chocolate wafers are 35g and the white chocolate bar was 45g. Averaging out I figured I could put 50 mL in there and it would be OK. I measured everything out on my scale.  

I heated up the cream, chopped up the chocolate, added it to the cream and turned the heat off. Once it was melted, I wiped down the outside of the bowl to make sure I didn’t get any of the condensed steam into the chocolate. Then I poured it into a silicone cake dish, stuck this in the refrigerator and hoped for the best. I left mine in until the next day but it’s pretty much finished once cooked.  In the morning I took out the chocolate and turned it onto a plate of powdered tea, again from Shizuoka, and powdered sugar.

The nama choco was absolutely the perfect consistency - hard enough to handle but still very soft. I used a cookie cutter to cut out flower and heart shapes and coated each piece in the powdered Shizuoka green tea and sugar mixture. 

Oh my God it was good! Like so dang good! If somebody had given me this as a gift, I would’ve been blown away. Unfortunately for Valentine's this little lady won’t be giving her husband matcha chocolates only because he doesn’t really like sweets or matcha. But I am going to force him to try it.

And then I’m hoarding the rest for myself. A gift for me. Yum. 

This post is supported by Shizuoka Green Tea Guide, one of City-Cost's Supporters helping City-Cost bloggers to enjoy life in Japan and engage in new experiences.