Salted Caramel and Chocolate Tart

I have been wanting to make a caramel and chocolate tart for so so long now, but for some reason the idea of making a tart scared me. I think it is because cakes and cupcakes are my 'safety blanket', the prospect of a tart seemed really daunting! A couple of weeks ago, I spied a 9 inch tart tin and four mini tartlet tins in TK Maxx for an absolute steal (£8 for the set!) so I decided to go out of my baking comfort zone and finally make that caramel and chocolate tart.

Salted caramel is very popular at the moment and I have certainly jumped on the salted caramel bandwagon (chocolate cupcakes with salted caramel buttercream will be appearing on the blog soon!). So, I thought I would create a tart with a salted caramel filling to contrast a bitter ganache - the sweet and salty caramel really balances out the bitter dark chocolate. I hope you like it!

Ingredients (for a 9 inch tart tin)

For the pastry

250g plain flour

50g icing sugar

125g unsalted butter (cut into small cubes)

1 large free range egg

a splash of milk 

For the salted caramel

220g caster sugar 

105ml water

245ml double cream

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp salt 

For the chocolate ganache

140g good quality dark chocolate 

(I used Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Belgian Dark Chocolate 72% cocoa solids)

25g unsalted butter (cut into cubes)

200ml double cream

1-2tsp caster sugar

Method

Shortcrust pastry

1. Start by sifting your flour and icing sugar into a large mixing bowl and rubbing the cubes of butter into the flour mixture with your fingertips so that a breadcrumb-like texture forms. 
2. Beat your egg and add it to the mixture with a small splash of milk and mix it with your hands and form a ball of dough, ensuring that the mixture has come together - not too sticky but not too crumbly. 
3. Wrap your ball of pastry dough in some cling film and leave to rest in the fridge for at least half an hour.
4. After half an hour, dust a clean work surface and a rolling pin and begin to roll out your pastry, turning the dough as you roll until it is about half a centimetre thick all over.
5. Carefully roll the pastry onto your rolling pin and place over a 9 inch tart tin. Press the pastry into the sides, being particularly careful not to stretch the dough too thin. If holes do begin to appear (as they did with mine), just patch it up with any leftover dough. 
6. Some recipes say to cut away all of the excess pastry from the tart tin, which is what I did. However, my pastry did unfortunately shrink down once it was baked, so I would suggest leaving some extra pastry around the edges just in case.
7. Prick the pastry all over with a fork and place in the fridge to chill for another half an hour and preheat your oven to 180ºC. 
8. Once the pastry has chilled, put a sheet of greaseproof paper onto the pastry and fill with baking beans, ensuring that the beans are packed in tightly so that there is (hopefully) no shrinking. Bake in the oven for 12 minutes with the beans and a further 12 minutes without the beans, just be careful when removing the hot beans from the pastry case! 
9. Once the pastry case has been cooked, leave to cool and then move on to making the salted caramel filling. 

Salted caramel

1. Measure out your cream in a jug, add the vanilla extract, mix together and leave to one side.
2. Next, put your sugar and water into a medium sized pan and place onto the hob and turn onto a medium to high heat. You will need to bring the sugar and water to the boil, but you must resist the temptation to stir the mixture! If you need to, shake the pan to get things moving, but stirring caramel will crystallise the sugar and then the batch will be ruined. 
3. So, keeping an eye on the caramel and shaking if necessary, you will see it go from white to clear to a dark orangey colour. As soon as it looks orange/amber you need to remove from the heat (it burns very quickly) and pour in the vanilla cream, being really careful not to splash the hot sugary caramel onto yourself. Mix in the cream and you will get a gorgeous silky caramel. 
4. You may find that your caramel has some hard lumps in it - if this happens simply return the pan to a low heat and stir until all of the lumps have gone.
5. Finally, add the salt and stir once more and pour into your cooled pastry case. Put in the fridge for a minimum of 2 and half hours - if you can spare an extra hour or so, then definitely leave it longer. After this time you can make your chocolate ganache. 

Chocolate ganache

1. Break your chocolate into small pieces and put into a heatproof mixing bowl along with the butter.
2. Next, pour your cream into a small saucepan, add the sugar and bring to the boil.
3. As soon as the cream begins to boil, pour it over the chocolate and butter and stir until smooth and silky. 
4. Take your tart out of the fridge and pour the ganache over the top and smooth it out. Return to the fridge for an hour or so or until the chocolate sets. 
5. Slice your tart and enjoy! This tart is very rich, so you could probably get about 16 small slices :)

The salted caramel recipe makes around 300ml of caramel, so you may be left with extra after pouring it into your tart case. It will keep in the fridge for a week or two and can be used as a nice extra for desserts and drinks!

I really hope you like this recipe, I'm really happy with the way it turned out. I doubled the pastry quantities so I had some leftover dough to create tartlets with my new mini tart tins, so stay tuned to see a summery cocktail inspired tartlet recipe over the next few days...