Chocolate Almond Tart

Happy Valentine's Day! 💕 This year, I was inspired to make a chocolate tart because I recently bought two mini perforated tart rings. I had never made tarts, but after watching Hanbit Cho's "Foolproof Tart Shell Masterclass" YouTube video, I knew I wanted to give it a try. Luckily, he also had a chocolate tart recipe!

Making these tarts was a real learning adventure. There were several components to this tart, many of which I decided to make from scratch as well, including the feuilletine (thin crispy crepe flakes) and almond praline paste. Because I had to make all these components and there was refrigeration time to account for, this project ended up taking me about 1.5 days to complete! The learnings acquired through the process and the end result made it worth the effort though. 

I'll try my best to break down the recipe and share my learnings!

Tart composition

These tarts are made up of 5 components: 

1. Chocolate tart shell
2. Croustillant (crispy/crunchy layer)
3. Chocolate ganache
4. Chocolate glaze
5. Candied almonds garnish (not part of the original recipe)

Notes:

• Because the glaze and tart shells require the most refrigeration time, we will be covering those components first.
• The candied almond garnish is made as part of the croustillant (which uses the candied almonds in a paste form).
• You'll want to make the ganache last, because once you make it, you'll want to pour it into the tart shells that already have a layer of the croustillant. 

chocolate glaze

While the video states that this glaze is "optional", it made a big difference on my final product. Because my ganache did not set super evenly, the glaze helped to give the tart a more smooth and glossy finish, making the finished look more polished. 

Ingredients 

• 15ml water
• 30g sugar
• 30ml corn syrup*
• 20ml condensed milk
• 2g gelatin (1 gelatin sheet)
• 30g dark couverture chocolate **

*I didn't have corn syrup, although I did try to make that from scratch too... it didn't work out, so I used maple syrup instead. I did not end up tasting much maple flavor in the final glaze

**I used dark chocolate chips

Method

1. Bloom gelatin in ice cold water
2. Add water, sugar, and corn syrup to a sauce pan and heat it to 103C/217F
3. Remove from heat, and add condensed milk, bloomed gelatin, and dark chocolate. Stir until smooth
4. Refrigerate overnight 
   

chocolate tart shell

This tart shell is made via the "creaming" method where we beat room temperature butter with the sugar, creating a pâte sucrée. The other common method of creating a shortcrust dough is the sablage method, which involves "rubbing" the cold butter into the flour, creating a pâte sablée. This tart shell is sweet with a crumbly texture, but holds up well during assembly.

With my tart rings, this recipe made about 7 tart shells.

Equipment

• Mini perforated tart rings (mine were 9cm or 3.5" in diameter, 2cm or 3/4" in height, and I bought them from NY Cake)
• Perforated silicone mat OR perforated parchment paper
• Pairing knife

Ingredients 

• 80g Butter (room temperature)
• 75g Powdered Sugar
• 12g Almond Powder
• 15g Cocoa Powder
• 40g Cornstarch
• 40g Egg
• 140g Cake Flour 140g

Method

1. Beat the butter lightly
2. Sift the powdered sugar, almond powder, cocoa powder, and corn starch into the butter and mix until combined*
   
3. Add the egg in 3-4 parts
4. Sift in the cake flour and mix
5. Knead the dough to make sure dough is uniform and well mixed
6. Flatten the dough between two sheets of parchment paper, and rest in the fridge for at like 1 hour (I ended up letting it rest overnight)

Assemble and bake the tart shell

1. Preheat the oven to 160C/320F
2. Line your pan with the perforated silicone mat / parchment paper
3. Grease the inside 
4. Cut out discs and strips for your tart. To cut the discs, trace the inside of your tart ring with the pairing knife. Cut the strips a little wider than the height of your tart ring.
5. To assemble, place the disc at the bottom of the tart ring. Take a strip and line the inside. Cut off any excess length, then use the heat of your fingers to fuse the edges of the strip together, as well as the seam between the strip and the disc. Trim off any excess dough above the height of the tart ring. Excess dough can be recombined and rolled out to create more tart shells. 
6. Bake at 160C/320F for 15 minutes
7. Allow the shell to cool in the tart ring for about 5 minutes before removing the shell from the ring, and cool fully on a cooling rack

* At this point, my dough looked much drier than what was shown in the video, but it ended up coming together after the egg was added!

the Importance of a perforated lining

The original YouTube video specifically mentioned to bake these tart shells on a perforated silicone mat... which I didn't have. So I thought, maybe I could just get away with parchment paper? After all, how much air is really circulating through those tiny holes?

In fact, it did make all the difference. 

Here's my tart shell, baked on plain parchment paper. The bottom caved up, resulting in domed bottom layer with cracks on the underside. Not cute! 

And here's my tart shell baked on perforated parchment paper. The bottom disc remained even and flat. 

A silicone mat would probably result in a less prominent dotted pattern on the bottom of your tart, but if you're in a pinch, making your own "perforated mat" by piercing parchment paper all over with a toothpick worked pretty well!  

Croustillant

Croustillant, which means "crisp" in French, refers to the crisp and crunchy layer that sits at the bottom of this cake. This layer provides a great textural contrast to the soft and fudgy ganache filling. The crispiness comes from the feuilletine, which are crispy, thin, sweet crepe flakes.

Ingredients 

• 15g Milk Couverture Chocolate*
• 5g Dark Couverture Chocolate*
• 45g Almond praline (recipe below) **
• 45g Feuilletine (recipe below if you can't find storebought)

* I didn't have milk chocolate, so I used semi-sweet chocolate chips. I also used dark chocolate chips for the dark couverture chocoalte

** The original recipe calls for hazelnut praline, but I made an almond praline instead. 

Method

1. Melt the chocolates together in the microwave
2. Mix in the almond praline
3. Fold in the feuilletine, taking care to not crush the flakes too much. 

Feuilletine 

I did not have feuilletine on hand, or corn flakes (the suggested substitute), so... I looked up how to make it myself. Why not make this project more involved?? 

I followed this feuilletine recipe by @CookingFantasies 

Equipment

• Sheet pan
• Parchment paper
• Cake spatula (offset would be helpful but straight is fine too) or any long/flat utensil that can be used to thinly spread the batter

Ingredients 

• 30g powdered sugar
• 30g all purpose flour
• 30g egg white
• 30g melted butter 

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 160C / 320F
2. Sift powdered sugar and flour together
3. Mix in the egg white until combined
4. Mix in the melted butter. You should have a fairly thin batter
5. Spread a thin layer of batter onto the parchment paper. Try to make the layer as even as your can
6. Bake for 5-10 minutes (depends on your batter thickness) or until the surface is a golden brown
7. Allow to cool in the pan
8. Once the sheet is cool, break it up into flakes. It should snap into pieces pretty easily. 
9. Store in an airtight container until ready for use. 

Almond praline

The original recipe called for hazelnut praline, and I did have some hazelnuts... but they were pretty old and the resulting praline ended up tasting a bit off. So I decided to make an almond praline instead. 

I followed another Hanbit Cho video recipe and used the first "Wet Caramel" method.

Note: half of the candied almonds will be reserved for the garnish

Equipment

• Food processor
• Silicone mat or parchment paper

Ingredients 

• 80g whole almonds (skin on is fine)
• 54g sugar
• 16g water

Method

1. Add sugar and water to a sauce pan and heat to ~114C/237F 
2. Remove from heat, and add in the almonds. Mix with the sugar syrup until the sugar crystalizes on the surface of the almonds and on the bottom of the pan
3. Heat on medium low, and constantly stir the almonds around. This cooking process not only helps to eventually caramelize the sugar, but also toast the almonds at the same time. Heat until the sugar coating the almonds caramelizes into a rich brown color.
4.  Transfer to a silicone mat or parchment paper and allow to cool completely
5. Reserve half of the candied almonds for the garnish, and add the other half to a food processor and blend it into a paste/butter.*

* My food processor was not strong enough to crush it into a smooth nut butter, so I left it as a thicker paste form. 

chocolate ganache

The original recipe calls for a mix of milk and dark chocolate. I only had dark and semi-sweet chocolate, so my resulting ganache was a bit darker than the original recipe. I felt like the sweetness of the other components (like the tart shell, croustillant, and candied almonds garnish) was enough to balance out the darker chocolate ganache.

Ingredients 

• 140g Heavy cream
• 100g dark chocolate*
• 100g milk chocolate* 
• 25g butter (room temperature)

*I used about 140g dark chocolate and 60g semi-sweet chocolate chips, because that was what was left in my pantry

Method

1. Heat the cream in the microwave to about 45-50C (113 - 122F) 
2. Melt the chocolates together in the microwave until it's about 45-50C (113-122F)
3. Mix the heated cream with the chocolate and stir with a spatula to combine
4. Mix in the butter and stir until the butter is melted and incorporated into the ganache

Tart Assembly

1. Add ~15g of the croustillant into the cooled tart shells
2. Pour the ganache on top, stopping a few millimeters from the top of the tart shell. Swirl the ganache and/or gently shake the tart to even out the ganache layer. Work quickly, as the ganache will start to set. 
3. Once the ganache has been layered in, allow the tarts to refrigerate for 2-3 hours.
4. Once the ganache layer is set, we can add the glaze. Heat the glaze in the microwave until it becomes a liquid again.
5. Quickly pour it on top of the ganache layer, and swirl the tart to create an even glaze
6. Top with crushed candied almonds. I added some along about 1/3 of the of edge of each tart. 

Final thoughts

If you're interested in trying to recreate this tart, I highly recommend referencing Hanbit Cho's original video. He does a great job explaining the details of the different steps, and the video visual really helps. I had a lot of fun making this tart and I'm definitely inspired to make more tarts in the future.

Thank you for reading!