Chocolate almond tartlets

When googling ‘chocolate puff pastry recipes’ it comes up with lots of pages about making croissants and pain au chocolat, but not with many recipes for using proper chocolate puff pastry. There were a few recipes for Millefeuille, which incidentally was the first recipe I tried with my chocolate pastry, but I fell into one of the major pitfalls of food blogging in winter: It got dark before I managed to take the photos, and as I have no fancy lighting equipment, any photos taken in artificial light look shockingly bad.

By the following weekend I’d decided that what the internet really needs is an interesting new recipe using chocolate puff pastry, rather than another millefeuille anyway, so I set about inventing my own. This recipe is a combination of the techniques I have learnt over this month as I liked the idea of combing them all to make one super-pastry.

The puff pastry shells are baked with a filling of the dense and brownie-like chocolate almond paste, and then topped with a swirl of chocolate crème pâtissière and chocolate palmiers. Although they look awfully rich, the crème pâtissière is quite light and clean-tasting, and balances out the heavy almond paste and flaky pastry much better than a buttercream would.



Things I have learnt from making these tartlets:

Don’t put more than two teaspoons of the almond paste into each pastry shell – you may have some left over and be tempted to put more in so it doesn’t go to waste, but then you won’t have a good ratio of almond to crème pâtissière.

Make sure the pastry is rolled out very thin and leave it overhanging the top of the muffin tin by about 0.5cm. When they are baking the pastry will expand outwards and also shrink down in the tin. Leaving the overhang ensures that there will still be lots of room for the fillings.

I’ve noticed that if you leave the palmiers in the oven for longer than 7-8 minutes before turning them over they will rise up in the middle and end up looking like cowboy hats! I think this is something to do with the way they are rolled as a spiral rather than the more traditional shape.

Chocolate almond tartlets: (makes 6)
160g chocolate puff pastry - 110g for the bases and 50g for the tops

For the crème pâtissière:
2 large free range egg yolks
35g caster sugar
1 tablespoon cocoa
1 tablespoon plain flour
100ml milk
100ml cream
50g dark chocolate
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon dark rum (optional)

• Whisk the sugar and egg yolks together in a large mixing bowl. Add the flour and cocoa and continue whisking until there are no lumps.
• Heat the milk and cream in a saucepan, but do not allow it to boil.
• Pour the milk/cream mixture over the egg mixture, making sure that you continue to whisk all the time to prevent it turning into scrambled eggs.
• Put this mixture back in the pan and bring to boil over a medium heat. Again, you need to stir this constantly to prevent it from curdling or catching on the bottom of the pan.
• When it becomes a good thick consistency, take it off the heat and stir in the melted chocolate and vanilla extract and rum (if using).
• Pour into a bowl and place a piece of cling film over the surface of the crème pâtissière to prevent it forming a skin.
• Leave to cool to room temperature and then put in the fridge until you want to use it (which can be up to 2 days in advance).

For the chocolate almond paste:
30g butter
30g sugar
30g ground almonds
1tsp cornflour
½ tablespoon of cocoa
pinch of salt
1 large free range egg yolk
1 tablespoon milk
30g chocolate, melted
½ teaspoon vanilla extract

• Put all the ingredients into a bowl and beat until well combined
• Set aside whilst you make the tart shells

Make the tart shells:

• Lightly butter a 6 hole muffin tin and preheat the oven to 190°C
• Roll out the 110g block of chocolate puff pastry to a large square
• Cut the pastry in half with a sharp knife then place the two halves on top of each other
• Roll up the dough from the short end to form a log shape

Mark 6 sections on the log and cut rounds from the dough

• Roll out each of the rounds to form a 12cm circle
• Place these circles into each of the muffin tin holes, making sure you don’t trap any air bubbles under the base, and gently press into the tin
• The pastry should overhang the top by about 0.5cm, to make it more even you can trim any uneven edges with a sharp knife
• Drop two teaspoons of the almond mixture into each pastry case
• Place the tarts in the oven and bake for 20 minutes
• Whilst the tart shells are baking make the palmiers

Make the palmiers:

• Roll out the 50g block of chocolate puff pastry to a large square
• Cut the pastry in half with a sharp knife then place the two halves on top of each other
• Roll up the dough from the short end to form a log shape, then roll it in the granulated sugar
• Mark 6 sections on the log and cut rounds from the dough
• Press both sides of each round into more granulated sugar, flattening slightly with your fingers as you do so
• Place on a baking tray lined with parchment and bake for 7 minutes, then turn each palmier over and return to the oven for a further 7-8 minutes until they are crisp

Assemble the tartlets:

• Once the tartlets have cooled to room temperature, fill a piping bag fitted with a star-shaped nozzle with the crème pâtissière and pipe a generous swirl onto the top of each tartlet.
• Finish with a palmier stuck into the side of the crème pâtissière at a jaunty angle, then stand back and admire your handiwork!