[Inez] Chocolate hazelnut tarts

I've been eying this recipe from The Baker's Daughter for a while now. February being pastry month on the blog is as good an excuse as any to get moving with the tarts. I had kind of been thinking about making this recipe next weekend, following my one year tradition of making extravagant chocolate desserts for Valentine's Day rather than, you know, celebrating with a special someone or something silly like that. (Wow, the formatting on that one is all weird now that we switched to the new template for the blog.) Turns out having a giant blizzard is more of a motivator to make chocolate deliciousness than a Hallmark holiday.

Here's why I wanted to make this recipe:

and

Hazelnuts and chocolate. Proof that there is a Higher Power who loves us.

I'm going to walk you through the recipe, because parts of it made me a little nervous. I'm here to reassure you that it will be all right. The recipe you see below has been modified slightly to make it, in my opinion, even better.

Crust:

• 1/2 cup hazelnuts
• 1/2 cup sugar (or maybe as little as 1/3 cup)
• 7 T butter
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 cup + 3 T flour
• a few pinches of salt

The recipe originally says to use a food processor, but I don't do that. Therefore, stick your hazelnuts (either toasted or raw) in a blender or a coffee grinder and grind them up until they are like hazelnut meal.

Throw the hazelnuts, sugar, flour, and salt in a bowl and mix it around. Cut in the butter, or if the butter is frozen you can grate it in.Then, mix in the egg yolks.

This is where I got nervous. You're supposed to add the egg yolks -- yes, two eggs yolks are the only liquid you add -- and then form the dough into a disk and refrigerate it for an hour. But I didn't have a disk, I had a crumbly mess. Trust in the process. It will turn out all right. Form something resembling a disk, wrap it tightly, and refrigerate an hour.

Meanwhile, make the filling:

• 1/2 cup cream
• 10 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped (you really do want bittersweet, not semi-sweet, for this)
• optional: liqueur or other flavoring (e.g. Frangelico, Kahlua, etc)

Heat the cream till just about to boil. Pour over chocolate in a heat-safe bowl and let sit 5 minutes. Then whisk it together and drool. Don't eat it yet! Refrigerate (covered) for 1 hour.

Ding ding ding! One hour's up! Turn your oven to 350F. Grease and flour 6-9 tart tins (see below for an explanation of the numbers). Then take the crust out of the fridge. Now, the recipe originally says press the crust into 6 3-inch tart tins, so that's what I did (okay, 6 ramekins, but whatever). Having done this, I would like to advise that you turn this recipe into 8 or 9 tarts rather than 6. These babies are intense, and you want the end result to be slightly soporific bliss -- not a coma. Also, having personally made the bottom much thicker than the sides, I would advise that you try to keep the crust to an even 1/4 inch or slightly less, including on the bottom. Once you've pressed all the crusts into the tins or ramekins, fill them with parchment paper and baking beans (so the crust holds its shape). 

Bake 15 minutes. Remove parchment paper and beans, bake another 5-10 minutes. Let them cool and then -- this is neat -- remove the crusts from the tins or ramekins. Actually you could probably wait until after the next step to remove the crusts. If you try that, let me know how it goes.

Now take the ganache out of the fridge and whip it on high for 1 minute until "it doubles in size and becomes fluffy." I'd say fluffy is an exaggeration, but maybe I did it wrong. Divide the filling between the crusts and smooth the top of the fillings as best you can. 

Whip another cup of cream (do not sweeten it!) and put a healthy dollop on top of each tart that will be immediately consumed. 

Consume.

Side note: Elise, have you tried the new Blogger editing thing? I don't know if they have it for browsers other than Chrome since that's all I've used it in, but it makes dealing with images a lot easier. You can drag them around and decide after you've uploaded them how big you want them to be and how you want them to be centered.