Mocha Caramel Tart

Makes 8 small or 1 large tart

I'm not a huge coffee drinker but I can certainly appreciate the addition of coffee in a dessert, especially when paired with chocolate like in these indulgent little tarts. Crisp, gluten free, chocolate pastry, a layer of coffee caramel topped with rich dark chocolate ganache and all finished off with with a Kahlua cream and roasted hazelnuts. A dreamy combination, if I do say so myself!

Ingredients:

Pastry-

250g gf plain flour

50g gf cocoa powder

100g caster sugar

150g cold butter, cubed

3 egg yolks

30ml cold water

Caramel-

300g caster sugar

70g butter

75ml double cream

75ml strong coffee

Salt

Ganache-

300g dark chocolate

200ml double cream

Cream-

250ml double cream

50g icing sugar

Vanilla (optional)

50ml Kahlua

75g hazelnuts (optional)

Method:

1. Start by making the pastry; sift the flour & cocoa powder into a food processor and add the caster sugar and the butter. Blitz until the butter in incorporated into the dry ingredients. Add the 3 yolks and blitz again. You may not need all the water so slowly pour it into the running food processor until the pastry comes together. Remove the pastry and knead briefly to ensure its lump free. At this point either form into one large disk (for a large single tart) or into a log (for smaller individual tarts) and wrap tightly in cling film and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

2. Preheat the oven to 170C. Once the pastry is chilled, its time to roll it out on a well floured work surface, either slice the log and roll out individual rounds to 4mm thick or roll out the large disk to 7mm thick, both want to be a few centimetres than you need for the case. Whichever you choose, you should butter or use professional bake spray, which you can buy here, on the tart cases and cut rounds of parchment paper out to line the bottom. Gently lift the rolled out pastry and place in the case and alternatively turn the case and lift and press down the pastry into the corner. You have to be quite gentle as without the gluten, the pastry is more fragile than ordinary, but don’t worry if it cracks you can patch it a little. Once nicely in the case, take your thumb and run it around the inside of the edge of case to slice the pastry off and press it all in firmly. Using crumpled up parchment as a barrier, add your baking beans to the inside and blind bake for 25 minutes, removing the baking beans and parchment for the last 5 minutes. Tip, if you do have any cracks that have appeared, you can whisk an egg and brush it into the cracks and pop it back into the oven for a couple of minutes to seal them.

3. To make the caramel, put a large pan on a medium heat on the stove with the butter and sugar and salt in it. Keep an eye on it and shake to ensure the sugar caramelises evenly. Once the butter has melted and the sugar dissolved and all has turned a rich caramel colour, take it off the heat and add the coffee and cream in gradually, it will bubble and may splutter so do it slowly and stir well to combine. Allow this mixture to cool a little and then pour into the pastry cases, about 1/3 of the shell. Pop them into the fridge to set whilst you make the ganache

4. To make the ganache, melt the chocolate in a heat proof bowl over a pan of simmering water (bain Marie) and once melted, add the cream and continue to stir on the heat as the chocolate will stiffen as the cool cream hits it. Once its a nice consistency, pour it in the tart cases up to the top and chill again.

5. Once chilled, remove from the fridge 30 minutes before serving. Pop the hazelnuts in the oven for 10 minutes to roast and then crush lightly. To make the cream topping sift the icing sugar along with the cream and vanilla into a stand mixer and whisk to soft peaks, keep an eye on it because it can easily over whip. Tip in the Kahlua and mix in well. To serve, either pipe or quenelle the cream on top of the tart and sprinkle over the roasted hazelnuts.