Chocolate Truffles

After I started college and first moved away from home, returning home for breaks was when my mom and I would go on adventures around SLC. Granted, SLC is not that big a place and I'd lived there my whole life, but for whatever reason that was when we started exploring the "off the beaten path" areas around the valley. One of the first shops we came across is called Xocolate. I'd never had chocolates fancier than See's before that (the cheap stuff you see during Valentine's). The truffles at Xocolate are exoctic flavors and are art work unto themselves. Not your everyday chocolate covered peanut glob. We would go every time I came home to get a handfull of their fancy truffles.
Skip forward a few years and we first heard of Lavender Days, a festival at the lavender farms in the middle of Utah. They have baking, aroma therapy, gardening, a western village, a medieval village (including a very real jousting tournament!), and dozens of essential oils. We bought a packet that included lavender essential oil. (An essential essential oil!) And that's when it finally dawned on me to make my own truffles, starting with the Xocolate inspired lavender truffle.
So now it is tradition to make chocolate truffles for Christmas gifts. (Ok, this is only the second Christmas I've made them, but in true Bryn Mawr style, anything done more than once is a tradition!) Along with the essential oil flavors, I've moved onto flavored syrups by Monin. Though meant for cocktails, they work very well for baking, too. I wish I had more time, I would do dozens more flavors, but these have taken me all week and it's almost Christmas already, so these will do for this year. Buon Natale!