TWD - Chocolate Truffle Tartlets

This weeks TWD recipe is Chocolate Truffle Tartlets found in Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan on page 382.  If you don't own the book and would like the recipe you can find it at this weeks hosts blogs awhiskandaspoon , spikebakes,  Good Eats and Sweet Treats and CookBookHabit.  We are cooking two recipes per month from this book, one more challenging than the other, the tartlet recipe is this months challenging assignment.  Just the fact that it was the challenging of the two had me nervous.  I have made a few tarts before and eaten my fair share so I was looking forward to tasting these! 

I wasn't sure my kids would appreciate the biscotti so I was planning on omitting it completely.  In the end I decided to make half of the batch with biscotti and the other half I folded in freeze dried raspberries, hoping that they would give it the texture that they would be missing without the biscotti.  Besides, raspberries and chocolate are a sure fire winning combination.....right?! 

My tartlet pans made it to me in the mail from Amazon on Friday, but for some reason my hubby and I decided that this past weekend would be a great time to do a 48 hour cleanse.  I'm not really sure what we were thinking, it was pure torture.  This was the longest 48 hours of my life and I craved every food under the sun while we consumed food like pictured below.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE green smoothies, but this was kale, pineapple, flax and mint.  That's it.  So it was chewy and tasted pretty much of raw minty kale. Blech! 

I decided to make the dough on Sunday and make the tartlets on Monday so that hubby and I could enjoy them fresh with the kids. 

I gathered my ingredients and got to work on the dough.  It came together so much faster than I thought it would.  I chose to do the method using the food processor.

Nice cold butter ready to be added



I am not sure I had the right texture here but this is after the butter was pulsed in

I was particularly nervous about this step, I was worried it wouldn't come together but it was really quite simple.  Phew!

Here is my finished dough ready to be wrapped and chilled!

I got a bit of a late start today (Monday) but thankfully again the tarts had several steps but were actually pretty simple.  I was relieved, I am not sure why I let a recipe make me feel anxious :) 

Here is the egg yolks and sugar mixture being folded in with the melted chocolate and butter

The buttery yellow egg yolk/sugar mixture

Folding the chocolate mixture into the remainder of the egg yolks and sugar

Here are the tartlets ready to go in the oven. Pictured below is one of the tartlets with freeze dried raspberries.

I put them in for 10 minutes but they didn't quite look done, so I went for the additional 2 minutes and I think they came out just right, maybe slightly under but hopefully that translates into soft delicious chocolate and not raw egg :)

Here are some pictures of the finished product, they look so good but I am making the family wait until after dinner!

Review time!  The opinions were positive!  Since I had three with biscotti and three with raspberries I cut each one in half so we could all try both kinds.  I wasn't expecting the biscotti to soften as much as it did but I was pleasantly surprised at the texture.  The raspberries had a nice chewy texture and tart flavour, it really helped cut the richness of the chocolate which was a bit much for me.  Hubby liked the one with biscotti more and one of the kids definitely liked the raspberry one better.  After asking the other kids/taste testers I think the consensus is that the biscotti didn't add much flavour and they liked the raspberry tarts more.   Both versions were delicious and this recipe will be repeated for sure. 

I hope my fellow TWDers enjoyed this recipe as much as I did!  Next month we are making Rugelach and Irish Soda Bread!  We are all looking forward to both recipes in my house.