Dark chocolate, chilli caramel and macadamia nut tart
This is a very naughty play on the flavours of a Snickers bar with layers of chocolate ganache, wickedly good caramel and toasted nuts. The caramel is really dark and not too sweet, flavoured with a hint of chilli and sea salt for a mysterious character. Feeds 6.
Ingredients
200g plain flour
40g icing sugar
60g unsalted butter (cold), diced
60g lard, diced
1 egg, separated,
For the chilli caramel
50g macadamia nuts
½ tsp chilli flakes
150g caster sugar
50g unsalted butter
75g soft brown sugar
3 large tbsp golden syrup
150g crème fraiche
¼-½ tsp sea salt
For the chocolate ganache
2 eggs plus 2 egg yolks
70g caster sugar
300g dark chocolate, broken into small even-sized pieces
200g unsalted butter, diced
60g flour
A few tbsp of cream, if needed
Recipe
You will need a 30cm round cake tin (or two 20cm round cake tins), brushed with melted butter, and a sugar thermometer.
You can either make the pastry or use 375g ready-made-all-butter-shortcrust pastry. To make the pastry, place the flour, sugar, butter and lard into a food processor and pulse a few times until the butter vanished into the flour.
Add the egg yolk and pulse again. In a separate bowl, lightly beat the egg white. Save a third to brush the pastry case and whizz the rest into the mixture, little by little, until the pastry comes together into a ball. You may need to add up to a tablespoon of ice-cold water to bind the pastry. Wrap in clingfilm and chill for at least an hour.
Roll the pastry 2-3mm thick to fill the cake tin and lift it onto the tin. Press down firmly into the sides and corners of the tin, prick all over with a fork and trim away the excess pastry, allowing for a 1cm overhand. Freezing for half an hour or chill in the fridge for up to a day.
Preheat the oven to 180C (160C fan)/250F/gas 4. Press some kitchen foil weighed down with baking beans inside the cake tin, ensuring that you fully cover the pastry. Blind bake for 25 minutes before removing the baking beans and cutting away the pastry overhang. Brush the pastry with a lightly beaten egg white and bake for another 5-10 minutes until the pastry is pale golden.
Turn the oven down to 130C/250F/gas ½. Heat the macadamia nuts until they are lightly toasted, then roughly chop them. Crumble the chilli into a saucepan with the caster sugar and 25ml water and place over a medium-high heat until the sugar starts to darken in patches. Swirl the sugar around to mix the dark bits into the lighter ones without stirring. Once the sugar has turned a very dark reddish brown (just before it starts smoking and turning black), add the butter and stir to mix in. Then add the rest of the caramel ingredients, except the nuts, and keep stirring to combine until the mixture has reached 110C. Remove from the heat and stir in the nuts.
For the ganache, preheat the oven to 170C/335F/gas 3. Whisk the eggs with the sugar until light and fluffy. Place the broken chocolate and the butter in a heatproof bowl over, but not toughing, a pan of simmering water. When the chocolate has melted into the butter, fold in the eggs and flour. If the chocolate splits – which is will do if you have over-heated it – beat in a few tablespoons of cold cream.
Spoon enough caramel to just cover the bottom of the tin. Pour over the molten chocolate, bake in the oven for 5-10 minutes until just set, then remove from the oven and leave to cool to room temperature. Serve with lashings of crème fraiche or double cream.
TIP
Making pastry is much, much easier than it sounds and unbelievably quick, whizzed up in moments in a food processor ready to rest in the fridge for an hour, or a few says, if needed.
IMAGE CREDIT: Tara Fisher