Chocolate Almond Tart

This chocolate almond tart is an accidental creation but trust me, it won’t be an accident to make it.

I was sat at home thinking about what recipe to make that I haven’t already made before and after a while, I came up with this chocolate almond tart.

It all starts with a chocolate pastry case, which is filled with a generous layer of dark chocolate sea salt almond butter and chocolate frangipane and once baked, it’s finished with a luscious dark chocolate ganache with a generous pinch of sea salt.

You may think that theres too much chocolate but trust me, the salty element really helps balance out the recipe. To make this recipe the best possible, I used the cocoa powder and dark chocolate from Cocoa Runners as well as the limited edition dark chocolate sea salt almond butter from Pip & Nut.

 

I haven’t really been a fan of almond butter until I tried this variety – its lovely! Don’t forget to try the dark chocolate sea salt almond butter. If you want to save 10% on any of your Cocoa Runners chocolate, click on the links and you’ll save 10%! Cocoa Runners offer unsweetened chocolate, dark chocolate, milk chocolate, cocoa powder, cocoa nibs and make your own chocolate bar!

Anyway, let’s get started, shall we?

 

Ingredients:

Pastry:

1/2 egg.

45g granulated white sugar.

112g butter, chilled.

170g plain flour.

20g cocoa powder.

A pinch of salt.

 

Chocolate frangipane:

75g butter.

75g granulated sugar.

75g ground almonds.

10g cocoa powder.

10g plain flour.

1 egg.

 

Pip & Nut dark chocolate sea salt almond butter.

 

Dark chocolate ganache:

50g dark chocolate.

50g double cream.

 

Sea salt flakes.

 

Methods:

Before you get started on the recipe, you’ll want to do some prep work. I recommend starting by weighing up all of the ingredients, grabbing any equipment you may need, such as food processor, mixing bowl and whisk/spatula as well as a pie/tart dish. When the time comes, you’ll also want to preheat your oven to 180˚c/350˚f.

To start on the recipe, you’ll want to work on the pastry (as this requires time chilling in the fridge). Take a small bowl and place in the sugar and egg – whisk the two together until they are fully combined and the sugar has dissolved into the egg, set aside until needed later on.

Take a food processor and place in the flour, cocoa powder and salt, then pulse everything together until its combined.

You can then go ahead and add in the butter and pulse this in until its fully incorporated – the mixture shouldn’t come together but look more like wet sand.

Now go and add in the sugar/egg mixture and pulse until a dough starts to form – being careful not to overman the dough otherwise it will be tough textured once baked.

Lightly flour your work surface and place the dough on to it. Knead together until it’s smooth, bringing it into a fat round. Wrap in clingfilm and place in the fridge to chill for at least 45-60 minutes.

After the time in the fridge, you can flour your work surface again and place the dough on to it.You’ll want to roll it out using a rolling pin until its around 5mm in thickness.

Once you achieve the required thickness, drape the pastry over your rolling pin, then place the pastry over your tart/pie dish. Press it all into place, ensuring no cracks appear (if they do, use the excess pastry to fix it). Using a small knife, you can trim away the excess, then place into the fridge while you make the frangipane filling.

The frangipane is super easy to make – take a medium sized mixing bowl and place in the butter, granulated sugar, ground almonds, cocoa powder, plain flour and egg. Whisk everything together until all of the ingredients have become combined and you have a cake batter. Now is also the ideal time to preheat your oven to 180˚c/350˚f.

Now you can go ahead and remove the unbaked pastry case from the fridge. Take your jar of almond butter and give it a good stir, then add a generous amount into the base of the pastry case and spread it out until you have a pretty consistent layer.

Grab your frangipane and pour that on top of the almond butter and just spread it out until you have a level layer of frangipane. Place this into your preheated oven and bake for 22-25 minutes or until a tester comes out clean when inserted into the centre of the frangipane.

Once baked, you can remove from the oven and allow to cool fully before you move on to finish the tart.

Later on, once the tart has cooled down, you can make the ganache. Making this sort of ganache is super easy and takes no real effort, simply start by placing the dark chocolate into a small bowl, then set aside. In a small saucepan, place the double cream and allow to almost reach a boil, then remove from the heat and pour over the chocolate (ensuring the chocolate is covered by the hot cream), now allow it to sit for a minute and then give it all a good stir until you have a thick, smooth and glossy ganache.

Take your tart and pour the ganache on top, spread out until you reach the outer edge. You can spread it out however you like but I went with a rough choppy look but you could get it as smooth as you’d like – its really up to you!

An optional finish would be to sprinkle over some sea salt flakes, just while the ganache is still wet. This helps cut through the potential sweetness and compliments the dark chocolate wonderfully.

That’s all for today guys, I hope you enjoyed. If you did, don’t forget to share this recipe with your family and friends and enjoy it. I’ll be back soon with another blog post and YouTube video, so join me then. In the meanwhile, don’t forget to check out my other social’s – Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube. The YouTube tutorial will be linked down below.