Triple Chocolate Tart with Sea Salt

Triple Chocolate Tart with Sea Salt

by | Jun 30, 2017 | 0 comments

My grandmother always told me to eat my beans, she never said I could have them in cocoa form! And just to be safe, I’ll have 3 kinds of ‘vegetables’, you know, for a balanced diet 😉 While you’d maybe think it’s strange to combine salt and chocolate – they are a match made in heaven. The sweet white chocolate, creamy milk chocolate and bitter dark chocolate combined with the sea salt is just sublime. And the best part? You get to go all Jackson Pollock on it afterwards!

TRIPLE CHOCOLATE TART WITH SEA SALT

Makes 1 large tart

 

Chocolate pastry

¼ cup The Kate Tin Cocoa Powder, plus extra for dusting

200g cake flour

125g butter, chilled and cubed

½ cup icing sugar

3 egg yolks

2 tbsp ice cold water

 

Filling

300ml cream

105g butter

100g each The Kate Tin Dark Baking Chocolate, Milk Baking Chocolate and White Baking Chocolate (300g in total), chopped, plus extra to decorate 

Pinch of sea salt

 

Place the cocoa, flour, butter and icing sugar in a food processor and process until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Gradually add the egg yolks and just enough water to form a dough. Flatten into a disc, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 1 hour. Roll the pastry out to 5mm thick and line a 25cm loose-bottomed tart tin, allow the pastry to roughly hang over the sides (we’ll trim it later) and prick the base with a fork. Refrigerate again for 30 minutes then bake blind* at 180C for 15 minutes, remove the paper and weights and bake for another 10-15 minutes until crisp. Trim the pastry edges with a sharp knife and allow to cool. Place the dark, milk and white chocolate each into a medium bowl. Place the cream and butter in a saucepan and heat until just below boiling point. Pour 135g of cream/butter mixture into each type of chocolate and allow to stand for a few minutes to melt. Stir until smooth. Pour the dark chocolate into the pastry case and place in the fridge to set. Once firm, pour over the milk chocolate and set again before pouring over the white chocolate. Refrigerate for 30 minutes to set completely. Decorate with extra chocolate, if desired and sprinkle with sea salt.

 

 

 

TIP *Baking blind refers to the process of placing baking paper inside the lined tart tin the filling the tart with baking beads, beans or rice to weigh it down and prevent the pastry from puffing up.

Cheat’s Chocolate Caramel Tarts

Cheat’s Chocolate Caramel Tarts

by | Jun 24, 2016 | 0 comments

#SPONSORED

I’m all for cheat’s anything when it comes to eating – especially when it comes to cravings! The quicker I can get from the making part to the eating part, the better! A few weeks ago, I discovered a ground-breaking new way of making shortcrust tart cases. While I’m all for making pastry from scratch and resting, rolling and blind-baking, sometimes, you just want to eat more than you want to bake and that’s okay – which is why this recipe will change your life. Shortbread biscuits, people. The answer was there all along – duh! Simply crush up the biscuits with some butter, press them into the tart cases and bake for 10 minutes and hey, presto (as they say), you’ve got tart!

While I’m all for shortcuts, the one thing I don’t cut the corner on is proper caramel sauce – nothing from a bottle or ready-made can EVER replace a proper homemade caramel sauce. I like to use sugar with flavour AND sweetness, and while boring white sugar gives you the latter, my favourite unrefined, Natura Light Muscovado Sugar, gives you both – double whammy! And because just two layers of deliciousness is never enough, I’ve topped these tarts with dark chocolate (the good stuff) and a sprinkling of sea salt for some salty crunch. Cheating never tasted THIS good!

Cheat’s Chocolate Caramel Shortbread Tarts

Makes 4

 

200g (half a packet) shortbread biscuits (I used Eet Sum Mores)

1 tbsp melted butter

165g Natura Light Muscovado Sugar or Natura Soft Brown Sugar

¼ cup water

½ cup cream

25g butter

200g good-quality dark chocolate, melted (I use AFRIKOA 70% Dark Chocolate)

sea salt flakes, for sprinkling

 

Preheat the oven to 180C (160C fan-forced). Grease 4 x small spring form tart tins. Place the shortbread biscuits in a food processor and pulse until very fine – almost powdery consistency. Add the butter and mix to form a consistency similar to wet sand. Use a teaspoon to press the biscuit crumbs into the prepared tart tins to form a pastry case then bake in the preheated oven for 10 minutes or until golden. Allow to cool thoroughly. To make the caramel, place the sugar and water in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Simmer until the mixture reaches 140C on a thermometer or until soft crack stage – when a little caramel dropped into a cup of water forms a soft ball which gets hard after a minute. Add the cream and butter and swirl until combined. Remove from the heat and pour into the baked pastry cases. Allow to cool completely then spread with the melted chocolate. Sprinkle a few sea salt flakes on top and allow to set – if you can wait that long that is!

Disclaimer: This post has been created in collaboration with Natura Sugars, however, I only work with brands I think are awesome and that I actually use myself.