Chocolate Tarts

I decided to make chocolate tarts as they would provide a little bitesize piece of flavour and I like chocolate!! The recipe I used to these was found in a book called Scones, Muffins and Teatime Treats.  

I made the pastry the night before, so I had less to do on the day, though the recipe says it only needs around 20mins in the fridge to cool. The pastry consists of plain flour, custard powder, butter, egg yolk and water. I used margarine instead of butter, as always! 

First step was to combine the margarine and the flour together:

Flour and marg crumbling together

As you can see from this picture my machine wasn't very good at combining the mixture using the aluminum blade and left a lot of flour around the outside. Using a spatula this was easily mixed in. Once that was done the liquids were added and the mixture combined to a nice pastry. 

Combined pastry

I then wrapped the pastry in cling film and left it in the fridge overnight, along with the other varieties of pastry I made. 

Pastry in the fridge

When we were ready to get started the next day I set my mum the task of making the pastry cases. This was a case of rolling out the pastry in flour and then cutting with a small cutter. We were using a cupcake tin to bake these so she used around 8cm cutter to achieve the right size cases. Once they were cut she placed them in the tin (first sprayed with oil so they don't stick) and they were ready for filling. Unusually the pastry wasn't baked blind in this recipe. 

Pastry cases all cut and ready to be filled

For the filling I combined cream cheese and sugar (in the mixer) until they were nice and creamy. Then added in egg and melted chocolate, finally adding ground almonds. This was all combined together till it was a solid colour, no streaks, and was smooth and then spooned into the pastry cases.Each case contained around 2 teaspoons of mixture. 

Cases filled and baking

These were baked in the oven, the recipe suggested 15mins but as usual they required longer than the recipe said and ended up having around 30mins in total. This was when they had just started to firm up under touch. 

Chocolate tarts cooling

They were left to cool and then drizzled with white chocolate, placed in the fridge so the chocolate could set. 

Drizzled chocolate Tarts

To serve the tarts I placed them on a 2 tiered stand. 

Cakes plated and ready to be eaten

Verdict: I gave these tarts 8/10, they were very rich and had a lovely intense chocolate flavour, however, I did find it quite heavy and sticky making them difficult to eat. Gary gave the tarts 9/10 and his comment was they were very nice. I also had my mum as a guest judge for these, she gave them 9/10 saying that they were very chocolatey and lovely. Overall these tarts get a total of 26/30, a very good score.