Treat your friends and family to this decadent chocolate and salted caramel tartlet for dessert! This tart recipe features a chocolate crust filled with one layer of gooey salted caramel and one layer of chocolate ganache! Top them with chopped peanuts or a sprinkling of sea salt!
Tartlets are one of my favorite desserts to make for special occasions – and for good reason! They not only taste amazing, but look amazing too. For this recipe, I opted for a chocolate crust and then layered each tartlet with salted caramel and chocolate ganache. The subtle bitterness of the chocolate perfectly balances the slight saltiness of the caramel. The final step is to sprinkle your finished tartlets with chopped peanuts to add a bit of crunchy texture to these melt in your mouth treats!
The dough is fairly simple and doesn’t require a lot of time or effort. And, if you’re lucky enough to have a food processor, it’ll just take five minutes! The filling is made on the stove top and then sets in the fridge – no oven time required. That means that we have to bake the crust completely before adding our layers of caramel and chocolate. To do that, it’s best to fill your crusts with rice or some other weight for part of the baking time to ensure that it doesn’t puff up. You can see a few pictures of the process in this post: smoked salmon tartlets.
ingredients
makes six to eight 4-inch (10 cm) tartlets or one 10-inch (25 cm) tart
dough
- flour 200 g (1⅔ c)
- cocoa powder 2 tbsp
- powdered sugar 50 g (½ c)
- butter 140 g (10 tbsp)
- egg 1 large
salted caramel
- sugar 320 g (1.5 c)
- water 120 ml (½ c)
- butter 85 g (6 tbsp)
- heavy cream 80 ml (⅓ c)
- salt ½ tsp
ganache
- semi-sweet chocolate 250 g (9 oz)
- heavy cream 250 ml (1 c)
garnish
- peanuts 1 handful
instructions
chocolate crust
- Mix together flour, cocoa powder and powdered sugar in a food processor.*
- Cut the butter into cubes and add to the food processor along with an egg. Pulse until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
- Pour crumb mixture into a bowl, knead until dough forms and roll into a disk. Wrap with plastic and chill in the refrigerator for 20-30 minutes.
- Cut the dough into six equal portions, about 75 grams each.
- On a lightly floured surface, roll out each portion into a 6-inch (15-cm) circle and lay over each tart pan. Gently press dough into the form. Trim the excess dough with a knife. If making one large tart, roll out one large circle.
- Blind bake* the tart crusts at 375 F (190С) for 30 minutes.
- Remove from the oven and let the crust cool 10-15 minutes before adding the filling.
salted caramel
- Cut the butter into small chunks and set aside.
- Pour the water and sugar into a saucepan and cook over medium high heat for approximately 12 minutes, occasionally swirling the pan to evenly distribute the heat.
- Once the mixture becomes a dark amber color, remove from heat. Make sure to cook the caramel until it becomes at least a medium-dark amber color! If it's lighter, the caramel will likely not set well.
- Immediately stir in the butter, heavy cream and salt and evenly distribute among the tartlets. Let the tartlets cool to room temperature and then for an additional hour in the refrigerator before adding the final layer of ganache.
ganache
- Break the chocolate into small pieces and add to a bowl.
- Heat up the heavy cream. If using microwave, start with 30 seconds and add more time if needed. The cream should be hot, but not boiling.
- Pour the heavy cream over the chocolate, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let sit for two minutes.
- Remove plastic and start slowly whisking the mixture, starting at the center of the bowl, until fully mixed in.
- Pour the ganache over the cooled salted caramel layer and let the tartlets cool to room temperature and then at least for an additional hour in the refrigerator.
- Garnish with chopped peanuts before serving.
notes
- no food processor?You could also use a pastry blender or even a knife to mix the cubed butter into the dry ingredients. Then mix in the egg with a fork just until the dough forms. blind bakingBlind baking simply means to bake your crust without the filling. Baking without the filling often causes tart dough to puff up, but there are several steps you can take to prevent this. First, pierce the dough with a fork all over the bottom. Then line each tart with foil and add uncooked rice, dry beans or lentils, or pie weights. Cook the tarts with the weights for the first 20 minutes. Carefully remove the foil. If the foil sticks to the dough, bake for another couple of minutes and try again. Once you've removed the foil, bake the crust for another 10-15 minutes until the bottom is fully baked.
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