Vegan Chocolate Matcha Truffles

Pin588Share30Tweet3ShareWhatsAppEmail621 Shares Jump to Recipe

The perfect gift for Mother’s Day or Easter, my vegan chocolate matcha truffles are light and creamy, with a delicately refreshing green tea flavour. Made from a cashew cream base and raw cocoa butter, sweetened with agave, flavoured with matcha, and rolled in cocoa, these truffles are decadence itself.

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, please see my privacy policy.

(By the way, this is an image-heavy post!)

If there’s one smell that reminds me of when we lived in Chiang Mai, it’s matcha. Before we moved to Thailand, I’d never even heard of it, much less tried it, but thanks to my friends, LiLi and K’Poon, iced matcha latte rapidly became one of my all-time favourite drinks. I drank gallons of the stuff!

What is matcha?

Mat-cha (抹茶) is finely-ground green tea; however, if you’re thinking, “Hey, I could just chuck some green tea leaves into my coffee grinder”, you’d be wrong!

I mean, you could do that but you won’t get matcha because it’s not just any old green tea! The tea used for matcha is grown in the shade for several weeks prior to harvesting, which gives it its distinctive taste, as well as elevated levels of caffeine. In addition, the steams and veins (yes, tiny little veins!) are removed from the leaves before they’re processed, leaving only pure tea leaves behind. You can understand why it’s so expensive, can’t you?

Matcha in Thailand

Matcha was the hippest thing when we lived in the Land of Smiles, and I discovered many other matcha yums…

matcha ice cream
matcha custard buns
a mountain of matcha-flavoured shaved ice
matcha and chocolate cake
matcha bao (they got a bit squished)
matcha and fruit cake

We left Thailand in mid-2014, and since being back in Europe, I’ve seen it become a thing here too. And it’s really, really expensive. Lucky for me, I discovered some matcha at our local Chinese supermarket, and while it cost more than I used to pay back in Thailand, it was nevertheless a pretty reasonable price.

As soon as I opened the packet, and inhaled that beautiful matcha scent. I was instantly transported back to Thailand. Back to the floating markets of Bangkok, back to Chiang Mai, and back to Mae Hee.

Khlong Lat Mayom
Khlong Lat Mayom
Picnics on Huay Tung Tao lake with our friends (that’s LiLi & K’Poon on the right, with Jo & Noi on the left).
Buddhist monk repairing a Naga statue at Wat Doi Suthep
My view at Mae Hee
Mae Hee has fantastic sunsets!

I miss my friends, I miss the food, I miss the sunshine, I miss the gentle Thai way of life but most of all, I miss the spectacular wildlife…

The Thai for butterfly is ‘pi-sua’, which translates as ‘ghost shirt’. I love that!
We had legions of blue-crested dragons in our garden in Mae Hee.
This super-cute rock hyrax is related to elephants!
I found this pig-tailed macaque scavenging in bins!

That matcha aroma brought back all the longing to return to Thailand that I’ve been feeling for ages, and made me feel quite homesick. I look forward to the day that we return!