April 2020 – Little Favors

Chocolate & Hazelnut Tart

April 30, 2020May 1, 2020 EthelLeave a comment

What makes you happy? I’ve been trying my best to appreciate this rare ‘free’ time we have now. I would have never imagined in my life that this would happen. With that said, afternoon tea definitely makes me happy. Amongst that, cute wooden plates, crinkled linen and brown things also make me happy.

Silky ganache and crunchy hazelnut butter. Flakey sea salt.

The tart shell is basically a pressed in pie or cheesecake crust. I made my own cookies (recipe here) to grind into fine crumbs. You can use graham crackers instead. If you really don’t feel like baking, you could always make an oreo cheesecake crust instead which only requires melting butter and mixing it with oreo cookie crumbs – there are many recipes online!

Filled 1/3 way with chunky hazelnut butter. I purchased this freshly ground chocolate hazelnut butter at a grocery store called rainbow in San Francisco. One of my favourite places to visit! The store is filled with so many self-serve bins of herbs, spices, nut butters, granola. You name it, they’ll likely have it. The just don’t sell meat, which I’m fine with.

Chocolate & Hazelnut Tart
Yield: 3 – 4″ tarts

Hazelnut Tart Base:

40g buttery cookie crumbs
25g ground hazelnuts
15g cocoa powder
15g icing sugar
20g unsalted butter, melted
pinch salt

Stir all ingredients together, divide into 3 equal portions and press into tart moulds
Freeze until firm
Preheat and oven to 350F or 170C
Bake for 10-12 minutes
Press down again if it has puffed up with a spoon
Leave to cool in mold

Ganache Filling:

110g Heavy cream
15g Honey
90g Dark chocolate (valrhona guanaja 70%)
12g Unsalted butter, room temp

Place cream and honey into a small pot and bring up to a boil, turn off heat
Immediately pour over chocolate, let sit for a few seconds
Stir until smooth
Whisk butter in

Assembly:

Spread ~ 1 TBSP hazelnut butter at the bottom of the tart
Pour ganache on top of hazelnut butter
Grate chocolate on top of ganache
Refrigerate to set
Once firm, remove tart from mold gently (has to be cold or it’ll fall apart)
Sprinkle flaky salt on top of tart just before serving
Enjoy at room temperature

Fruit Tart

April 24, 2020April 24, 2020 Ethel2 Comments

Beautiful strawberries, pastry cream and jam hanging out in the fridge. That calls for fruit tarts please! You can fill it with any fruit, blueberries, kiwi, dragonfruit, citrus!

Ideally, you’d want to make the pâte sucrée (sweet tart crust) the day before, let it chill, roll, freeze, cut and line then freeze again.

Pâte Sucrée

Yield: ~ 6 5cm tarts

Ingredients:

150g All Purpose Flour
63g Icing Sugar
75g Unsalted Butter, cold and cubed
1 ea Egg

Rubbing by hand or using a mixer with a paddle attachment, mix flour, icing sugar and butter together in a bowl until the butter has coated the flour
Stir egg into mixture until it forms a paste
Wrap in plastic wrap and chill until firm
Place enough dough in between two pieces parchment paper and roll until 1.5-2mm thick
Freeze on a flat tray
Punch out circles with a cutter to fit the size of the tart mold (I usually cut about 1-2cm larger than the diameter as you have to account for the height of the mold) – dough can be rerolled once, afterwhich it’ll become tough
Line pliable, but cold dough circles in the tart mold (too cold and it’ll be brittle and break, too soft and it’ll be too sticky to work with and try not to dust with flour as it makes your tart dry)
(Any leftover dough can be frozen if wrapped properly)
Dock with a fork to prevent shrinkage (prick the surface)
Freeze lined tart molds
Preheat an oven to 175C/350F
Prepare baking beans or pie weights for blind baking the tarts – either wrap beans in plastic wrap that’s oven safe or line the surface of the tart with parchment enough to cover the raw tart
Blind bake tarts straight from frozen for 10 minutes
Remove pie weights/baking beans and continue baking until golden ~ 10 minutes (oops, mine’s a little dark. you’d want one shade lighter)
Cool then remove from the tart mold

To assemble, prepare pastry cream and jam that you can find from the strawberry galette post!

Assembly:

Melt white chocolate or dark chocolate and brush tarts (this is to prevent it from become soggy in the fridge)
Spread 1 tbsp strawberry jam at the bottom of the tart
Spread 2 -3 tbsp pastry cream on top of jam (enough to cover and fill to the brim)
Assemble washed and cut strawberries on top of the pastry cream
Decorate with mint leaves
Chill for an hour before serving

Happy baking!!

Brownies

April 23, 2020May 6, 2020 EthelLeave a comment

Making a basic fudgey chocolate brownie is so simple it’s almost like stirring together box mix. All you need at minimum is a bowl, scale and spoon.

If you happen to have a kitchenaid or electric hand mixer, you could take it up a notch and whisk the eggs and sugar together before folding the melted chocolate and butter in. That still gives you a fudgey product that melts in your mouth.

Processed with VSCO with a7 preset Processed with VSCO with 4 preset 84D53196-6C08-494C-A3DA-6F9D0E597404

Brownies

Yield: 5″x5″ tray

58g Butter, unsalted
45g Dark Chocolate, 68% min
80g Granulated Sugar
20g Brown Sugar
1 Egg
1/2 tsp Vanilla extract
52g All Purpose Flour
1/4 tsp Salt
4g Cocoa Powder
Directions:

Melt chocolate with butter in a microwave at 30 second increments stirring in between each blast in the microwave until emulsified
Whisk sugar, eggs and vanilla into melted chocolate mixture
Sift in all purpose flour, salt and cocoa powder and fold in
Preheat and oven to 160C/325F
Pour onto a baking tin lined with parchment
Bake for 15-20 minutes or until center is slightly underbaked*
Serve warm with ice cream or chilled

*Baking until fully set will result in an unpleasant dense cake like texture
Cutting it while cold will result in a cleaner slice

Happy baking!