Sweet woodruff in 36% white chocolate

Sweet woodruff

Galium odoratum

Drifts of Sweet woodruff are a beautiful sight in spring - their whorls of green slim leaves look amazing en masse - and then with a haze of tiny white flowers floating on the top, it is quite magical.  It can form a lovely understory in the garden as well and I have been protectively weeding patches of it for years (usually to remove ground elder and so attempt to stop it being overshadowed).

The plant itself has only a very slight scent, but when you dry it, it really intensifies.  Some call is Scottish vanilla, and others compare it to Tonka;  I think I am with the Tonka group - it has an almond flavour as well as vanilla.  The flavour derives from the chemical coumarin, and the content increases with drying.  (It is essential to only dry leaves when they themselves are not damp: under damp conditions the coumarin converts to dicoumarin on drying, and this is toxic).

We grind carefully gathered and dried foliage into Original Beans 37% white chocolate, which turns it a beautiful pistachio-green colour, and as the original chocolate has no vanilla flavour in it, all the vanilla flavour in the bar is from the Sweet woodruff.  

Ingredients: 

Cocoa solids 36% minimum: sugar, cocoa butter, whole MILK powder, dried sweet woodruff leaves (<1%).

Net wt: 50g

Best before end 12/25