Chocolate Tarts with Spun Sugar
Ingredients
- For the tarts
- 125 grams butter
- 125 grams Pastry flour
- 1 Vanilla bean
- 250 milliliters milk
- 100 grams Couverture
- 100 grams ground, toasted Walnut
- 8 egg yolks
- 10 egg whites
- 100 grams sugar
- butter (for ramekins)
- sugar (for ramekins)
- 10 Ramekins about 1/4 liter (approximately 1 cup)
- For the spun sugar
- 200 grams sugar
- 25 milliliters Glucose syrup
Preparation steps
For the tarts: Boil the milk with the vanilla pod.
Set the crushed chocolate into a water bath to melt.
Heat the butter in a saucepan, stir in the flour, let sauté briefly, then take the vanilla pod from the milk and stir the hot milk into the butter/flour mixture. Cook about 10 minutes on a light simmer, stirring occasionally.
Pour the mixture into a bowl, let cool slightly and stir in 2 unbeaten egg whites. Stir in the egg yolks one by one, stirring until smooth again. Stir in the melted chocolate and nuts. Beat remaining egg whites with sugar until stiff and stir about 1/4 of them with the whisk into the mixture. Gently fold in the rest with a spatula.
Butter the ramekins and sprinkle with sugar. Use a pastry bag to fill each ramekin about 3/4 of the way with dough (it rises during baking). Set the ramekins into a pan, and fill the pan with hot water about halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Bake in a preheated oven at 180°C (approximately 350°F) for about 25-30 minutes.
Meanwhile, bring the sugar and to a boil with water, and let boil down to a brown caramel.
Remove the tarts from the ramekins for serving and garnish to taste with caramel threads.
For the spun sugar: Line the work surface with aluminum foil. Boil the sugar with 125 ml (approximately 1/2 cup) of water. Add the glucose syrup and boil everything until the sugar is amber. Place the pan base immediately in ice water. With a metal spoon, stir the sugar until it becomes tough. Hold the sugared spoon between your thumb and forefinger and work the sugar loose horizontally back and for, so the sugar is pulling strings. Carefully place these sugar strings around the tarts.
