Chocolate Ganache Tartlet with Salted Pastry Shell

There was Belgian chocolate in the pantry. It looked lonely. There was only one thing to do: make it happy! How about chocolate pastry?

As it turns out, I just happened to have a measure of home made salted pastry in fridge. I used the salted pastry recipe from Richard Bertinet's new book Pastry. I do not have fluted tartlet molds. No drama, as I do have 100mm stainless steel egg rings. Perfect. I will use the egg rings as tart rings for today.

I rolled out the pastry and lined the rings. I filled the rings with baking beads and let the pastry rest in the fridge for 30 minutes, whilst the oven heated. I baked the shells for about 20 minutes at 190C in my oven, until the edges of the pastry started to brown.

I pulled the beans from the pastry. Oops! I forgot to put the pastry shells back in the oven to finish baking. Oh, well. The pastry still turned out nice and flaky. I let the pastry cool and got started on the filling.

For the filling, I made a chocolate ganache with equal weights of chocolate and cream. I was not sure just how much filling I would need. I suppose I could work out the volume for a cylinder...

Let's see... V = π * r^2 * h, so Volume = 3.14 * (100mm diameter - 8 mm for the pastry = 92mm. Radius = 46mm^2) * (20mm - 4mm for pastry = 16mm). Volume for each pastry case = ~106,000mm^3 = ~0.106 Litres * 6 shells = 0.636 Litres of ganache, ignoring irregularities in pastry thickness and shrinkage of the pastry...

I couldn't be bothered. I used 225g of chocolate and 225g of cream. I figured there would at least be enough to fill the pastry shells. I would not mind too much if I ended up with more ganache than was strictly required...

Once the ganache was thoroughly blended, I filled the shells. I had just enough ganache to completely fill all the cases. Bummer! I was hoping for a bit extra so I could fill a ramekin for the chef... I let the tartlets cool until the ganache is set.

Dessert is ready!