Chocolate Tarts

After my lemon tarts met with great success (with my kids, that is), whereby they did a clean sweep in a few hours for the 2 times I made it, I decided I could move on to another flavour, chocolate!

By this time, I’ve gotten really tired of struggling with my 19 cm tart tin that doesn’t come with a loose bottom. I was fearful every time of unmoulding such a large fragile shell, and had to slice very carefully so as not to disintegrate the entire shell. I decided finally to make individual tarts using my one and only non-stick aluminium muffin tray. This was another adventure to elaborate on.

All you people should invest in those cutesy individual portion tart pan with loose bottoms like those below if you are serious about tarts. Don’t struggle like me.

Recipe (for about 10 individual tarts)

(adapted from Kitchen Tigress and David Lebovitz)

Tart Shell

85g salted butter cut in chunks
1 tbsp vegetable oil ( I use naturel)
3 tbsp water
1 tbsp sugar
160g plain flour

Chocolate Filling

125g dark chocolate broken into chunks (Lindt Excellence 70% and higher for bitter taste or Cadbury Old Gold 70% for sweeter taste)
1.5 tbsp of brown sugar (omit if using Cadbury Old Gold)
125ml dairy whipping cream (President)

Method

Preheat oven to 210 deg C, convection mode.
Grease a muffin tray with butter and dust with plain flour.
For tart shell, place everything except flour in a metal pot over a stove with medium heat and stir lightly.
When everything has melted or dissolved, forming a bubbling mixture that has darkened slightly (in about 5-8 mins), off the flames and pour all the 160g plain flour into the pot in one go. Stir until a dough has formed.

When cool enough to handle, place dough onto a scale and divide into portions of about 25g to 30g. Press each portion into the muffin tray. Bake till golden brown, about 15 min.
For unmoulding, place a cooling net tightly over the whole tray and turn it around swiftly. Lucky for me, they slid right out in perfect shape!
For the chocolate filling, warm the dairy whipping cream in the microwave till hot. About 1 min on medium.
Add cream to the sugar and chocolate and mix with hand whisk. I have learnt that that you shouldn’t add the chocolate to the cream or it will seized! Yes, and you don’t want to know what this means.