Wednesday 10 April 2013

Chocolate Salted Caramel Tart

My husband and I had our first 'dinner party' (really it was only his brother and his fiance - we can't fit any more than four at our dinner table!) last weekend. As soon as it was confirmed that they were coming over I scoured Pinterest and the Internet for recipes. I have to share this one. Chocolate Salted Caramel Tart.



Wow! It was amazing. Everyone thought so. Although next time I would make sure I use a candy thermometer to measure how hot the caramel is. I would go for soft ball temperature which is about 115 degrees C. The recipe I used didn't mention one so I didn't use one and the caramel was just about tooth cracking hard. It took some oven and microwave time to be able eat which made very interesting dinner entertainment!

This is the blog the recipe came from that I pinned from Pinterest. It was so much fun to make - just make sure you make it in advance so that it can chill in the fridge!

Chocolate Salted Caramel Tart

Ingredients:

Crust:
2 3/4 cups plain flour
1/2 cup icing sugar
125g unsalted butter, diced, chilled
2 eggs
pinch of salt

Caramel:
3 tablespoons glucose syrup
1 1/5 cups caster sugar
2/3 cup double cream
1 teaspoon rock salt or coarse sea salt (I would actually use more like 1 1/2 teaspoons next time as it didn't taste like salted caramel at all. It was more like normal caramel.)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, diced

Ganache:
1 1/2 cups double cream
4 tablespoons honey
300g 70% cocoa chocolate, chopped
125g unsalted butter

Method:

Crust:
Sift plain flour, icing sugar and salt together. Add butter. Using a food processor, process into a dough, adding the eggs at the end.
On a lightly floured surface, make the dough into a ball. Roll the dough out into a circle big enough to fit a 29cm tart pan with a removable bottom (I used a 25cm pan and put the rest of the dough into two more mini tart pans to give away).
Once the dough is in the pan chill it for half an hour.
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Blind bake the crust (line the crust with baking paper and bake with baking beans - I just used rice) for 15-20 minutes. Remove the beans (or rice) and paper, leaving the crust in the oven to bake for another 10 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Caramel:
Pour the glucose syrup into a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Add the sugar gradually, stirring until the sugar has started to caramelise and turns a golden colour (this is when you will want to add a thermometer to your pan).
As you are doing this, bring the cream and salt to a boil in another saucepan.
Remove the caramel from the heat once the cream and salt have melted together. Add the cream and salt mixture to the caramel very slowly as it can rise very quickly!
Stir the mixture with a wooden spoon over low heat until smooth.
Remove from heat, add the diced butter, and continue to stir until it is smooth again.
Pour into the cooled crust and refrigerate for 15 minutes.

Ganache:
Bring the cream and honey just to the boil. Pour over the chopped chocolate. Let it sit for a minute or two then stir until it is completely smooth. You may try it at this point and add a bit more honey if it is too bitter (I didn't do this but mine turned out to be delicious anyway!).
Let the mixture cool a little and then add the diced butter. Stir gently until it is nice and smooth.
Pour the ganache over the top of the cooled caramel. Return to the fridge to chill for 4-6 hours.

I may have licked the bowl after finishing with the ganache. Actually it was more like me using my rubber spatula to get it all out and stuffing it into my mouth. Elegant.

I would also take this out of the fridge a little before you are going to serve it.

Enjoy!
xx

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