CHOCOLATE TARTLETS…Mini pastry shells filled with chocolate ganache.

CHOCOLATE TARTLETS…

The recipe for the pastry cases / pie shells is from a quaint little book of contemporary recipes called ‘What’s Cooking Chocolate’ by Jacqueline Bellefontaine. I made these & some jam tartlets too, using the same pastry recipe. On Latha’s request, am posting these as soon as I can.

Here’s the recipe as adapted from her book…
Ingredients:

• Sift the flour into a mixing bowl.
• Rub in the chilled butter with your fingertips to get a breadcrumb like mix.
• Stir in the sugar.
• Add enough water to make a soft dough.
• Cover & chill for 20 minutes.
• Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C.
• Roll out to 1/8″ thickness, cut with a round 3″ cookie cutter (use appropriate size cutter) & line the mini muffin trays with them.
• Cover the pastry with foil, put in pie weights ( I used beans) & bake blind for 15 minutes approximately till light brown. Remove immediately from trays.
• Cool completely on racks & store in an airtight tin until use. I made mine 3 days in advance.
• I made 24 mini tart shells, & rolled out the rest of the dough out for jam tartlets. Got about 12-15 small shells.

• Make a ganache. When I made a ganache to frost the cake with, I made some extra to cut down on work. Ganache keeps in the fridge for 4-5 days. You can microwave it for 30 seconds to get the required consistency as it sets/hardens when chilled.
• Pipe or spoon into the shells.

• Top with marzipan embellishments. I made mine from scratch. You can find the recipe here. Alternatively, top with chocolate scrolls, leaves, sprinkles etc.
• Keep under refridgeration until use. These can be prepared 2-3 days in advance.

These little tarts were a big hit with the kids…the son had ‘reserved’ the lady-bug one in advance, & went on to take another one for good measure!!