Sweet cicely in 64% plain chocolate

Sweet cicely

Myrrhis odorata

Sweet cicely is one of the joys of early summer - its fulsome frondy foliage bulks out the hedgerow, and picking the young fresh leaves to get a lovely aniseedy-hit is a delight.  We have used it to flavour ganaches over the years, but struggled to find a way to capture the aniseed - it seems a little elusive, especially if subjected to heat.  We have found a good way seems to be to soak the young green seed heads in syrup, and then sieve them out and dry them.  Grinding this into a delicious salty 68% Dominican Republic plain chocolate from Bare Bones seems to have captured the aniseed surprisingly well and the salty liquorice works beautifully with the chocolate.  We have additied some chopped crystalised Sweet cicely seeds for added texture and flavour.

Ingredients: Cocoa solids 64% minimum: cocoa beans, raw unrefined cane sugar, cocoa butter: crystalised sweet cicely seed heads and stems (sweet cicely, sugar) 9%, salt.

Net wt: 50g

Best before end 07/25