Good morning, my wonderful baking friends! I have quite a confession to make, and I hope that you all will understand—this recipe below is amazingly quick and simple, I can hardly believe it myself. The dough has only 6 ingredients in it, and I know that they are in your pantry, and the chocolate ganache has 4 ingredients…yes, FOUR! I mean, I have made 3 of these tarts over just a couple of days, I promise that I have some sort of life outside of baking…
…which may be hard to believe, I know!
I made this recipe for a friend of mines birthday this week, whose love for baking is just about as crazy as yours truly. She is honestly all sorts of wonderful—an outdoors loving, musical obsessed, positivity radiating, lovely person, AND she was all about us blasting the Hamilton soundtrack at 9am at work the other day, sooo does it get any better than that?!
So to start with Miss Anna’s birthday chocolate tart, I used a simple pâte sucrée base (recipe found in my Lemon Blueberry Tart recipe!). It’s really just a sugar dough, it makes quite the vehicle for this type of tart, not the main star, but would totally win for best supporting role! ...And from there, a dark chocolate ganache. It is so simple to make, I don’t know why I haven’t made this (really) since school a couple of years ago.
Boiled cream—pour over the chocolate—stir to combine—add the butter—add the alcohol—put into baked tart shell—let set.
What I love is that while it is simple in steps and ingredients, the flavor is mind blowingly divine. You can play around with how dark you want your chocolate to be, but it’s going to end up so smooth and creamy, slightly sweet yet very rich, only a small sliver is required, or 3 small slivers if you’re me. Another fun addition you can do to this tart? For my friend’s, I added crushed up pretzels to the top of it, because I mean, duh, and the salty chocolate combination was undeniably delicious. Or you can just sprinkle coarse salt on top as well, and a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon or Carmenere goes a long way with this dessert as well!
This is certainly going to become a go-to for most dinner parties and celebrations, but it is also absolutely acceptable early on a Friday morning, dancing along to a little bit of Hamilton and enjoying for a birthday of a beautiful friend!
pâte sucrée ingredients and process
chocolate ganache ingredients
Heavy Cream—10 oz, or 1 ¼ C
Dark Chocolate, roughly chopped—5 oz, ~10 squares if using a Ghirardelli bar
Butter, cubed—2.25 oz, or 4 ¼ TBL
Bourbon—0.5 oz, or 1 TBL
process
Set up all of your ingredients, as the heavy cream will boil very quickly.
Place the heavy cream in a small saucepot with the heat on medium.
While the cream is coming to a boil, put the chocolate in a medium heat-safe bowl.
Once the cream comes to a boil (watch out so it does not boil over!), pour it over the chocolate and allow it to sit like that for 3-4 minutes.
Using a wooden spoon, begin to stir the heavy cream-chocolate mixture.
Once it has homogenized, add in the butter.
Stir until melted and combined.
Add your alcohol of choice—in my case, bourbon, always!
Stir.
Pour into your prepared 10” tart pan.
Place in the refrigerator for about 4-6 hours or overnight so that the ganache can set.
To decorate: it is tasty all on its own, but sprinkling salt over top the entire tart really makes the chocolate pop; also, fresh fruit is always a great option as well!
Enjoy with a glass of red wine and good company.
Bon Appétit!