It has been 26 years, but Annie Boyington still remembers her first truffle. It was 1982, and she was at Sal Anthony’s Restaurant just north of New York City’s Greenwich Village. The truffle came with an espresso after the Italian meal.

The truffle was a simple dark chocolate ball. But the dessert left an impression on Boyington.

“All I can say is it was memorable,” she says. “It wasn’t candy, it was chocolate. Just melt in your mouth, just mmmm.”

Still, it wasn’t until six or seven years ago that Boyington started making truffles for family and friends. Her recipe came from a coworker at downtown Seattle’s Metropolitan Grill. The coworker had brought into work a yule log, a cake lined with small mushrooms — truffles — made of chocolate.

It took another five years for Boyington to launch Trevani Truffles, named for her son Troy, her daughter Eva and her, Annie.

“The whole thing of me doing this is kind of a fluke. It wasn’t something I started out to do,” Boyington says.

A “long, sad, sob story” started Trevani Truffles. Boyington’s mom had a stroke in spring 2007 and moved into her family’s north Renton home. Boyington cut her hours at Metropolitan Grill to care for her mom. Meanwhile, Troy and Eva had been encouraging their mom to start selling her truffles.

So Boyington rented a downtown Renton apartment for her mom and hired a friend to care for her. And she started selling truffles at the Renton Farmers Market, her wheelchair-bound mom by her side. When the Renton market ended Boyington started selling at four Seattle farmer’s markets, two which run year-round.

“I love the farmer’s market scene,” she says. “I call myself a carnie.”

Boyington also arranges special orders through e-mail.

She makes about 24 truffle varieties, part of a “list of flavors that just grows and grows.”

“It’s a constant — I call it a constant

non-scientific experiment,” she says.

Each truffle starts from a block of chocolate in Creative Kitchen Works, a commercial kitchen on Southwest 41st Street in Renton. Boyington uses Venezuelan chocolate with a 60-73.5 percent cocoa mass. She then heats cream and butter and adds the chocolate to the mix. If she’s making traditional truffles, she adds a touch of Tahitian vanilla, then leaves the mix as is. But her other varieties require spices, liqueurs, fruits and other additions to the cream, butter and chocolate. This mixture is called ganache. Once mixed, Boyington chills the ganache for a couple hours to overnight.

She was working on the final step for a batch of traditional truffles on a recent day at Creative Kitchen.

Using a small metal spoon, Boyington scooped the chocolate mixture from a metal bowl, then rolled the small balls in Dutched cocoa powder. And voila – traditional truffles.

Boyington’s traditional truffles arealways in demand. But many of her truffles go beyond the traditional.

Trevani Truffles come in pear ginger, xocolatl (Aztec for herb water, a dark chocolate touched with chili pepper and cinnamon), Sicilian blood orange, lemon hazelnut, marzipan, white chocolate chai tea dipped in dark chocolate, noxious chocolate (dark chocolate with honey and brandy), a variety of raspberry flavors, and her favorite — moka buka — espresso, chocolate and a hint of annis.

“I think it’s delicious; I love that one,” Boyington says.

Boyington also makes vegan truffles, like the witch doctor, made of chocolate, lime and coconut cream.

She uses farmer’s market ingredients for several of her truffles, including pear-ginger, noxious chocolate and the raspberry varieties. She used lavender and mint from her garden for other flavors.

Most Trevani Truffles are made of dark chocolate. But Boyington has recently started experimenting with white chocolate, which she plans to use for savory flavors like a truffle made of white chocolate, virgin olive oil and Kalamata olives.

A trip to a Vosges Haut-Chocolat boutique in New York inspired Boyington to create savory truffles. The Chicago company sells a variety of non-traditional, gourmet truffles.

Boyington recently dreamed up a porter beer and pretzel savory truffle.

“I was laying in bed thinking, ‘What is good with chocolate?’” Boyington recalls. “And remembering years ago having a chocolate-chip cookie with a cold beer. It was really good.”

Customers also inspire some Trevani Truffle flavors, like the vegan varieties and her sweet bacon truffle with honey and sea salt.

Boyington didn’t initially like the idea of a bacon truffle. But two months of pestering from customers convinced her to give it a try. Those customers had swooned over bacon fondu.

“They asked me when was I going to make a bacon truffle. I said never,” Boyington says. “They were right, I was wrong.”

So Boyington is happy to take customer input. But no amount of customer input will convince her to make peanut-butter truffles. She simply doesn’t like the taste.

“That’s what Reese’s is for,” she says.

“If I don’t like it I can’t sell it,” she adds. “So far I haven’t disappointed customers. They all like what I’ve done.”

She loves watching those happy customers eat her truffles.

“Especially the ones who know how to savor it,” she says. “They take a little bite and light up.”

Boyington also enjoys making truffles.

“I love art work, I love working with my hands,” she says. “It’s like little pieces of art. It’s like creating something with my hands. I totally enjoy it.”

Boyington doesn’t often taste her finished truffles. That’s for husband Mark. But she does lick the spoon.

“Every once in a while I’ll treat myself,” she says.

She calls her truffles “fabulously wonderful.”

Just like that first truffle 26 years ago.

“I think I’ve got it here,” Boyington says, pointing to her pan of truffles on that recent day at Creative Kitchen. “I think I’ve duplicated Sal Anthony’s delicious truffles.”

For more information about Trevani Truffles, e-mail Annie Boyington at trevanitruffles@gmail.com.