philosophy (including important information on the chocolate we use) (back to top)

First of all, because our truffles are vegan, they do not support the system of institutionalized cruelty and death that is the meat and dairy industry. We do not believe that animal food is food. Food is things that are edible, and, as we see it, a cow was put here on this earth for her own purposes and not ours. Therefore, a cow is a living being and not food, nor does she produce food that is ours to eat or drink. But because everyone does not see things the way we do, this is a political issue.


We are political vegans who believe in real food, fat, and mind blowing flavor. We don't believe a vegan diet needs to be lacking in any way, and a feeling of scarcity in a vegan diet is one of the most common causes of people falling off the veganwagon. Our truffles are not "vegan versions" of "real" truffles -- they ARE real truffles. We don't use anything "instead" of anything else. All our ingredients stand on their own merit and are not intended to replace anything. For more information on our ingredients click here.


Third, Lagusta's Luscious Truffles are political because they are anti-corporate. It is with great sadness that we have witnessed the co-optization of the natural foods industry by large multi-national corporations. We believe in local economies, bartering, and getting by without the help of huge, hierarchal companies. Therefore we make our truffles in small batches of about 1000 and we (used to) sell them at Bloodroot Feminist Vegetarian Restaurant in Bridgeport, CT, a restaurant that we are proud to support because it stands for all of the things that we believe in and is not afraid to be political and knows that politics must go hand in hand with truly luscious food.


Fourth, unfortunately, chocolate itself is a huge political issue. It's not nice to think about while you're having your happy little nibble, but the chocolate industry is notorious for using slave and child labor (for more information, click here or do a Google search.) We used to use Jacques Torres chocolate. It has the perfect balance of bitter and sweet and a great mouthfeel for truffles. For a while, we couldn't get any info out of them about their raw materials, and were extremely frustrated by their apparent lack of concern (and NYC snootiness). Then, a friend and fellow chocolatier informed us that she had heard straight from Mr. Torres that his chocolate is fair trade. A spokesperson for their company said that their chocolate is fair trade, but they have no plans to put a FT label on their bags unless it becomes "trendy." Ha! Here's the deal: their chocolate is not organic, just F/T, and...they are sort of snotty on the phone and over email. So much for Jacques. We've moved on. We're so over him.

Anyway, after we stopped using Jacques Torres the chocolate search was on. We looked into ordering Dagoba Chocolate, which is organic and fair-traded, but it cost twice as much as what we had been using and, we felt, just didn't taste as good as we wanted it to. (Also, the company was run by new agey hippies that reminded us (Lagusta) too much of our parents. We recently learned that Dagoba sold out to Hersheys, yuck! Then we read this very bizarre article about Dagoba in The New Yorker, which just rubbed us the wrong way.

We kept tasting and rejecting chocolates (we do to this day). Most organic and/or fair trade chocolates just don't taste good enough for us. Eventually we switched to Scharffen Berger chocolate, whose website used to have extensive articles discussing the complex issues of labor practices, fair-trade certification, and organic certification in relation to chocolate. Scharffen Berger was p.c. enough for us, but it turns out that their excellent chocolate was just a little too wild and rough tasting for our smooth truffles (wonderful in super chocolately cake though!). November 2006 note: Sharffen Berger has been bought out by Hersheys, and their website no longer has the fair trade and organic information it once had. Hey! I wrote a whole essay on this phenomenon!

So, FINALLY, after yet another round of chocolate testing, we found our current true love: Callebaut makes a few organic and fair trade chocolates with a deep, complex flavor profiles (and their sugar is not processed through bone char!). We mix three Callebaut chocolates of different cocoa percentages to get the perfect blend for our truffles. Hooray! Phew!

flavors (back to top)
The truffles are available in five different assorted boxes:

The Wild Box (8 truffles, $13):

• Sea Salt (if you like salty-sweet candies, you'll love it, this one has become a new favorite. Garnished with super fancy fleur de sel sea salt)
• ***New! Chipotle!***The deeply smoky, rich, dark flavors of chipotle match chocolate perfectly. Also, chilies and chocolate are a traditional Mexican pairing, so our "wild" chipotle truffle is really, in a sense, a quite traditional flavor when put into context. The chipotle truffle is rolled in very finely chopped chocolate.
• Cardamom-Cinnamon (freshly ground cardamom and delicious freshly ground Mexican cinnamon)
• Ginger (with organic crystallized ginger garnish)
  

Remember, there is a two-box minimum order (any assortment).

The Fruity Box (8 truffles, $13):

• Coconut (a coconut-flavored filling rolled in toasted organic coconut
• Lemon (with lemon oil and organic lemon zest, it's Lagusta's favorite because it's super fresh-tasting)
• Orange (with lovely Boyajian orange oil and orange zest-infused cocoa powder)
• Double Chocolate (a classic chocolate truffle rolled in chopped chocolate)
• Pomegranate with rose petal garnish (a little tartness compliments the chocolate nicely - this one is a flavor bomb)
  

Check out this awesome review of our Fruity Box at GoDairyFree.org!

Remember, there is a two-box minimum order (any assortment).

The Nutty Box (8 truffles, $13):

• Almond (An almond-flavored center rolled in finely chopped toasted organic almonds)
  
• Double Chocolate (A classic chocolate truffle rolled in chopped chocolate)
  
• Peanut Butter (*Very* peanutty. Rolled in finely chopped organic peanuts.)
  
• Port-Walnut (A customer favorite, it is rolled in finely chopped toasted organic walnuts.)
• Pistachio (Rolled in finely chopped organic pistachio nuts)
  

Remember, there is a two-box minimum order (any assortment).

The Boozy Box (8 truffles, $13):

Remember, there is a two-box minimum order (any assortment).

The Big Assortment (28 truffles, $42):

The Big Assortment is a heavy box containing at least 6 of the flavors listed above. I promise you'll be delighted with our selections. (The box in the photo above contains wasabi, peanut butter, orange, cinnamon-cardamom, coconut, lemon, and kahlúa. Note that we no longer make wasabi, so you won't get that one though.)

about the ingredients (back to top)

The first ingredient in our truffles is chocolate. Searching around, we found a lot of vegan truffle recipes that included ingredients like tofu (scary), vegan margarine (horrors!), sugar, and cocoa powder first. In our minds, all of this is unnecessary (not to mention slightly revolting) and if you want to make a great chocolate truffle, vegan or not, you should start with chocolate. Ours is moderately dark and complex.

The next ingredient is luxurious, organic, full-fat coconut milk, made only from coconut and a tiny bit of a vegetarian emulsifier (guar gum). We used to use soy milk as the milk in our truffles, but were unhappy with the relatively long list of ingredients in it, which included refined oils and soy, a product of which we feel many vegans eat too much (soy is good, but eating soy at every meal is a little much). We are very happy with the richness of coconut milk, and the truffles do not taste coconutty at all (except for the coconut one).

The primary fat in our truffles is pure organic coconut butter. At this point, it becomes necessary to talk a bit about fat. Vegans (and others) need fat! if you are eating a healthy diet made up of real food and a wide variety of it, you are probably not going to have a problem with fat. Fat is what makes us feel full and tells us to stop eating, so if you are not eating enough of it, there is a real chance you might be overeating because you never have that lovely feeling of fullness. This is why you need our truffles!

More and more evidence is coming out about the health benefits of traditional oils like coconut. It is naturally saturated, unhydrogenated, mostly good (HDL) fat – mostly medium chain fatty acids which the body metabolizes efficiently and converts into energy, rather than storing as fat. It does not elevate bad (LDL) cholesterol levels. We like it. Click here to read an essay I've written about coconut.

Our truffles are not the sugary, sickeningly sweet candies that some call "truffles." These are grown up candies, good without being too sweet.

ingredients (back to top)

All truffles contain:
Organic coconut milk (coconut milk, guar gum [a natural emulsifier])
Organic coconut butter
Organic and fair trade dark chocolate (cocoa paste, cocoa butter, non bone-char sugar, soy lecithin, vanilla)
Almond flavor contains:
organic almonds
organic almond extract
Cardamom-Cinnamon flavor contains:
freshly-ground organic cardamom
freshly-ground Mexican cinnamon
Chipotle flavor contains:
fresh chipotle chile powder
Coconut flavor contains:
organic coconut flakes
organic coconut extract
Coconut-rum flavor contains:
organic coconut flakes
organic coconut extract
rum
Double Chocolate flavor contains:
nothing additional
Ginger flavor contains:
organic ginger
crystallized ginger (ginger, sugar)
Kahlúa flavor contains:
kahlúa
organic and fair-trade coffee beans
Lemon flavor contains:
lemon oil
organic lemon zest
cocoa powder
Orange flavor contains:
orange oil
organic orange zest
cocoa powder
Peanut Butter flavor contains:
organic peanut butter (organic peanuts, may contain .05 or less almonds, cashews, or sesame seeds)
peanuts
Pistachio flavor contains:
organic pistachios
Pomegranate flavor contains:
Pomegranate molasses (pomegranate juice that has been cooked down to a syrup)
cocoa powder
unsprayed rose petals
Port-Walnut flavor contains:
Port, madeira
organic walnuts
black walnut extract
Sea salt flavor contains:
Fleur de sel sea salt

If you are highly allergic to nuts, lagusta's luscious truffles are not for you, as little nut pieces find their way into everything during truffle time. : (

caring for your truffles (back to top)