This recipe is based on a post by the excellent
La Pâte de Dom which he calls 'Cracahuète', being a bit of word play
between croquant(crunchy) and cacahuète(peanut). Not being fond of peanuts
in cooking, I have switched the nuts to hazelnuts of which there are plenty on
the trees. The recipe serves 10 to 12 since it is very rich.
Like much modern
pastry cookery, the tart filling is a sort of 'club sandwich' of
several ingredients. These would be on hand in a professional
pastry kitchen and therefore the tart is little more than an assembly
job. In the domestic kitchen making each element from scratch for a single
tart is possibly more trouble than it is worth: frankly one can use as many
layers as one likes.
The basics elements are a sweet pastry case into
which are layered in turn, salted butter caramel, chocolate custard, chocolate
and hazelnut crunch, and hazelnut-flavoured white chocolate ganache. The
tart is iced with shiny chocolate icing.
As this is the second time of
making the tart, I already had some frozen sweet pastry and a pot of salted
butter caramel in the fridge, so the things needed were custard, ganache and
hazelnut crunch.
The recipes for the main ingredients are below.
The main technical issue is that since three of the fillings are soft,
these need to be frozen or very cold during assembly or the result will be
just a mess. This means that it is easier make the tart over several days,
leaving time for each ingredient to become very cold.
The assembly
comprises:
i. Blind bake a 20 cm round tart shell in the standard
way.
ii. Spread salted butter caramel on this base. Freeze until the
caramel is hard.
iii. Spread or pipe on the very cold chocolate
custard. You can easily level the surface by pressing a cling film wrapped
disc of the correct diameter onto the surface. Refrigerate until firm
or for up to 24 hours..
iv. Ice the frozen ganache disc. Place the
frozen crunchy layer on the custard and top with the still frozen iced
ganache. Hold in a cool spot not more than 15°C colder than your room
temperature. If it is colder than that, condensation will form on the
icing and spoil the finish. So if you need to refrigerate the cake,
put it a closed box. Take the box out of the refrigerator an
hour or so before it is to be eaten to allow it to warm up slowly.
Decorate as you
like.
___________________________
Salted Butter
Caramel
Ingredients:
Milk
50grams
Vanilla powder
2grams
Cream
200grams
Glucose Syrup 50grams
Glucose Syrup
100grams
Sugar
95grams
Salted butter
70grams
Salt
2grams
Bring the liquids and 50 grams of glucose to a boil, caramelise
the remaining glucose and sugar, pour on the nearly boiling liquid and stir well
to dissolve. Stir in the room temperature butter and salt while the mix is
still slightly warm so the butter blends but does not melt. Store
refrigerated in a jam jar. These quantities are enough for two
tarts. The mixture will need warming a little in the microwave to soften
it enough to spread or pipe.
____________________________
Dark Chocolate
Custard
Ingredients:
Milk
72grams
Cream
145grams
Glucose syrup 20grams
Egg
yolk
26grams
Dark Chocolate 112grams
Mix together all the ingredients
except the chocolate, heat gently to make a custard. The mixture shouldn't
boil so a double boiler or a Simmertopf are handy. Let the mixture cool a
bit and chop the chocolate into bits and stir in to dissolve. You can
sieve it to be sure there are no lumps and store in the refrigerator for a day
or two with the surfaced covered with plastic wrap so a skin cannot
form.
____________________________
Milk Chocolate and Hazelnut
Crunch
Ingredients:
Milk
Chocolate 15garms
Praline
Paste
60grams
Toasted hazelnuts 10grams
Ice cream wafers 40grams
Praline paste and crunchy
ice cream wafers are available commercially. The latter are sometimes
called Crêpes dentelles or Wafer rolls. There are recipes for hazelnut
praline paste on the web if you can't buy it.
Melt the chocolate and praline paste in the microwave until
liquid and stir in the lightly broken ice cream wafers and the
coarsely chopped toasted nuts. Spread into a thin18cm disc on a cake base
or plastic container lid. Wrap in cling film and freeze until
needed.
____________________________
White Chocolate and Hazelnut
Ganache
Ingredients:
Gelatine
powder
3grams
Water 18grams
Toasted
hazelnuts
40grams
Milk
150grams
White chocolate
50grams
Cream 215grams
Praline
Paste 80grams
Heat the milk and infuse with chopped hazelnuts for at least an
hour. Soak the gelatine in water for 20 minutes or more. Strain the milk
and reheat it, if necessary, to about 60°C and add the gelatine mix.
Gelatine doesn't like to be heated too much because it will lose its
gelling power. Melt the chocolate in the cream with the praline paste in a
microwave, stirring from time to time, until dissolved and mix into the gelatine
milk. Mix well, sieve if you like, and store over night in the
refrigerator with the surface covered in cling film to prevent a skin
forming. A day or two later whip the mixture until light and pipe or
spread into a suitable 18 cm circular mould. I used the bottom half of
this rather expensive one.
https://www.meilleurduchef.com/en/shop/pastry/cake-mould/shaped-moulds/sil-silicone-mould-kit-eclipse-silikomart.html
It
gives an attractive dome shape, but the world wont end if it is a flat
disc. It just has to fit inside the pastry case. Freeze the filled
and wrapped mould until needed.
____________________________
Shiny Chocolate Icing.
Ingredients:
Gelatine
powder 6grams
Water 36grams
Sugar
105grams
Glucose syrup
38grams
Water
52grams
Cocoa powder 38grams
Cream 98grams
The icing is prepared ideally on the day the tart is to be served.
Soak the gelatine in water for at least 20 minutes. Heat the glucose sugar
and water to 103°C and stir in the sifted cocoa or chocolate powder. Stir
thoroughly to produce a smooth mix. Heat the cream briefly in the
microwave and add to the chocolate mixture. When the mix has cooled to
60°C stir in the gelatine mix.
The next step is to try to remove any air in the mixture so no bubbles form
later. The ideal equipment for this is a small stick
blender. In a tall narrow container blend the mixture for 5-10 minutes
with the blender head always under the surface. After a while the bubbles
on the surface will disappear and the mixture will look shiny. Sieve the
mixture into a plastic jug and cover with cling film. At this point the
mixture will still be quite warm. It needs to cool to 34°C so it is thick
enough to pour as icing onto the frozen ganache. When the mixture is at
34°C, place the frozen ganache on a support on a plate, a 10cm pastry ring is
ideal, and gently pour the icing onto the ganache until it is entirely
coated. The excess will run off onto the plate. The icing should be
completely flawless like glass.
Finish the assembly by placing the frozen crunchy disc onto the custard in
the tart shell, and gently lowering the iced ganache in place. Two forks
are best for the job, with the tines under each side one can gently lift the
ganache off its support and lower it onto the filled tart shell. Or, less
successfully, onto the floor and into the dog.
The Pâte de Dom 'You Tube' video shows each step in exact
detail.
3 comments:
Oh my! That looks delicious! I agree about hazelnuts versus peanuts. Love that you are posting more recipes these days - they all look just wonderful.
Well - with slight embarrassment - I confess it's because I've recently been persuaded to start posting on Instagram (the slight embarrassment because I'm not convinced that it's the sort of thing I should really be doing at my age!) and so at the same time I put relevant recipes on Pomiane. The Instagram account is dantes_feast and it has a lot of garden/flower pictures as well as food...some of which I'm really rather pleased with...(thanks to camera technology, I hasten to add!)
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