Sweet and Low

Mentioning health food and chocolate candy in the same breath might seem incongruous--or even heretical--but at Mani Niall’s bakery on South Fairfax Avenue the two fit nicely.

Granted, the sugar-free, non-dairy truffles at Mani’s Bakery are not to be mistaken for anything you might buy in a more conventional sweet shop. Most truffles are buttery, unctuous and sweet; Mani’s are dense and maybe even a bit chewy. Not like granola, mind you, but more like something between a traditional chocolate drop and a truffle.

And that, essentially, is what they are. Mani makes three varieties of truffle. All are based on a ganache of pure chocolate sweetened with barley malt and rice syrup. One is simply dipped in hard couverture chocolate and rolled in cocoa powder. A second is rolled in pecans, and the third includes espresso and toasted almonds in the ganache and is covered with finely ground almonds.

The result might not have the melt-in-your-mouth sex appeal of a traditional chocolate truffle, but because of the delicate sweetness, it is infinitely more chocolaty. In fact, Mani’s truffles have that drop-dead chocolate flavor you associate with the best desserts.

In addition to the bakery, where basic truffles cost $1.25 apiece, Mani’s Bakery truffles are available at several local health food stores, including Mrs. Gooch’s and Erewhon, as well as at restaurants such as Flora Kitchen and Sports Club L.A.

Niall, who worked his way through school cooking in health food restaurants and later worked in the kitchen at the now-defunct Golden Temple of Conscious Cookery, says the truffles are an outgrowth of his exploration of sugarless desserts.

“I had used chocolate sweetened with barley malt that I had gotten from health food stores and was really pleased with the flavor,” he said. “I thought this might work. I experimented with using cream in the ganache , but then I thought that as long as we were making sugar-free truffles, we ought to try dairy-free too. We did a taste test and you couldn’t tell the difference.”

And that is the essence of Niall’s approach to health food.

“When I started cooking seriously, my partner and I would go out to dinner at places like Trumps and Spago and it was so inspiring,” he said. “You know, we’d go to Spago and order a vegetarian plate and they’d send us a platter filled with grilled vegetables from Chino Farms and a couple of sauces underneath. Now that’s health food.”

* Mani’s Bakery, 519 S. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles, (213) 938-8800. Open daily from about 8 a.m.-8 p.m. or later.