Ferrero Rocher Tartlets
Last year, two friends of mine and I held a little pop-up event together. During the event, I sold 5 different kinds of tartlets. One of them was this Ferrero Rocher tartlet. It was made from a gianduja chocolate mousse with a hazelnut praliné core, covered in a chocolate glaze studded with caramelized pieces of hazelnuts and set on top of a shortcrust pastry, concealing a crunchy chocolaty biscuit with hazelnuts*. Is it complicated? Yeah, a little bit.. Is it tasty? No doubt about it!
Chocolate Meringue Tartlets
Last year my American friends invited me to their Thanksgiving dinner. I baked these chocolate meringue tartlets for the event, in addition to a pistachio tart I brought as back-up. I’m pretty sure the other guests enjoyed these tartlets, you could see it on their faces. Literally, there were traces of meringue all over their beards and noses!
Pistachio Ginger Tart
This post was created for one reason only. I really wanted to try my hand at decorating the edge of a tart crust as seen in this YouTube video (although mute, it says a lot). In the video the chef explains how to do a perfect fonçage, which is important too, but then he continues to show how to make a nice decoration around the tart. I got excited.
Hazelnut Tartlets (from homemade Nutella)
I really wanted the headline to be Hashahar Tartlet. Hashahar is a classic local cocoa spread. I tried to make a tartlet version of Hashahar, but unfortunately it came out terribly sweet. Then I thought to maybe change it to Nutella tartlet, but it felt a little too branded. At the end, I decided to go for a tartlet with hazelnut cream (homemade Nutella) mixed with mascarpone cheese. It came out wonderfully and very nutty.
S’mores Tart v2.0
According to some of my American friends, s’mores are made of vanilla marshmallow, Hershey’s milk chocolate and Graham crackers. A classic camping snack. Roast the marshmallow on a campfire, put it on a piece of chocolate and sandwich it between two crackers. The heat of the marshmallow melts the chocolate and you get one big gooey party in your mouth. It’s a little difficult to obtain these ingredients where I live. Every time I try to replace them with similar alternatives, I get disapproving looks from my friends. Yet, I keep trying.
Apple & Honey Tart
This is one of my favorite tarts that I leaned to make at baking school. They did not give us the pleasure of baking it on our own during class, so I started baking it annually at this time of year. However, I replaced the layer of jam with honey, to better fit the holiday tradition. Although I do eat apples in honey all year long. Apples in salt too, that’s delicious. What can I say, I’m an apple boy. (Although I hate anything made by Apple.)
Lemon Berry Tartlets
Sometimes I like to combine elements from previous posts to create something new. For this post, I used the crust I baked for the lemon-lime pistachio tartlets. I filled the crust with the lemon cream I prepared for the Crembo’s lemon core. I decorated the top with leftover raspberries and blueberries from the mousse cheesecake. And here’s what I came up with, a lemon berry tartlet.
Flower Cookies
Not too long ago, my friend Nurit challenged me to bake a special kind of cookie. I find it difficult to refuse a challenge, and even more so to say no to Nurit. I went out to the garden, picked a flower, small and beautiful and red. This time, I didn’t give the flower to Nurit. I went back to the kitchen and baked a cookie with it.
