Salted caramel, honeyed chocolate ganache nestled in a sweet pastry shell.

Oh my there is such a saga to this blog post. It. took. hours. Why? Original recipe was flawed. So very flawed. What you see above is the result of a completely different recipe. Allow me to re-live the horror with you.

Firstly, the pastry was disastrous. You know when you look at a recipe and think ‘huh, that’s a weird one’? Well I am here to tell you that if you do think that; nine times out of ten, it will be weird or bad. There is a natural progression from weird to crap. Don’t forget that. Made it, chilled it, baked it, cooled it, raised one eyebrow, tasted it, spat it out.
So I thought, I’m running out of time here!! I’ll make shortcrust instead. Not enough butter left, so I have to go to the shops.

That alone – the disturbance to baking zen time – is enough to make me spit flames. I drove to Sainsbury’s and stalked the aisles like a serial killer in the grip of a psychotic break. Get to the chilled aisle and the ready-made pastry’s reduced – cheaper than the butter, in fact. A quandary. I derive little pleasure from pastry-making and I’m in SUCH a furious mood.

Mama is unhappy. What to do…?

The time is still tick-tick-ticking away. In my mind is a loop – make pastry, chill pastry, line tins, chill again, bake, tick-tock. I quickly checked that Grandad’s ghost wasn’t behind me and guiltily bought the dessert pastry. Wasn’t hit by a thunderbolt, so clearly got away with it. Frankly, if there had been a Marks and Spencer nearby, I probably would have bought the ready-cooked pastry cases.
Got home. Rolled the pastry out, lined the tins, chilled them, baked them, cooled, OK we’re back to normality. Good. Calm.
Made the caramel from same recipe (why?!?!?). Way too runny and way too sweet – she tells you not to take it too far. She’s wrong; it has no flavour. Can’t even use it as a sauce because you might as well pour syrup on your ice cream. Yuck. Goshdarnittoheck!!! (or something along those lines) Threw it away.
Tried again with white sugar instead. Didn’t like the quantity of salt with white sugar. Practically inedible. Threw it away. Then threw cook book away. Said bad, bad words of a personal nature about the author.
So.

As this recipe has been an internet thang (and let’s face it, I’m very late to the salted caramel party), I now search the internet for a recipe that will work. Am unconvinced until I find one by Green and Blacks. Check their cookbook and decide to make that one. Surely that one will work?
Search through larder for liquid glucose. I KNOW I have liquid glucose. Have nearly got my hand on it when there’s a larder landslide and a jar of Oregano smashes all over the floor. I didn’t have the energy to swear. I contemptuously spat out, ‘Well, yes, of course you would”. I was sarcastic to a broken jar of dried herbs.
Made the caramel. Interesting recipe in that it breaks the rules a tad, but all reports are positive and yay it worked! Oh yay! Oh thank you! Liking the saltiness. Good-oh. Filled the tarts.
Made the ganache – good job I halved the recipe, but, very nice. Excellent. What a relief.
Poured ganache over caramel tarts. Sprinkled a little fleur de sel on top for effect. Cool.
Oh, they look good!
Tasted one.
(Don’t panic – it was OK)
But.
It tasted like a Twix. A bloody twix! FIVE HOURS of drama with a stupid recipe that doesn’t work, researching the internet for one that DOES bloody work, smashing vital cooking ingredients into billions of shards of glass and green flecks, washing out the same saucepan endlessly, going to the SHOPS (!!) and all for a TWIX?!

A salty twix.

Happily, when I cut one in half the next morning for photographic purposes and tasted one again. I can confirm it was far superior to a twix. It really was much nicer than a Twix. People mmmm’d and ohhhhh’d over them.
In fact, you might not even think of Twix when you eat it because you won’t have the experience I had. You will be calm and zen and you won’t have been washing up for hours, nor sweeping up herbs.

Good for you.

This recipe is nice. Trust me, because I know one that doesn’t work.

This is fleur de sel. I bought it ages ago because it’s supposed to be better than table salt. They’re right. It is.

I didn’t have any tartlet tins, so I used muffin/cupcake tins. Just cut a strip of greaseproof paper to go under the pastry to get it out. I greased this lot  (it was the original pastry) but didn’t bother for the next lot of pastry – it came out fine – just lifted the little sling and out it came. I haven’t got any pastry pictures because I had lost the will to live, let alone take photographs.

I bought a 375g block of Sainsbury’s dessert pastry. Rolled it out, cut out circles, laid the circles on the slings and lowered them into the muffin cups. Lightly pricked the bottoms with a fork (insert joke here), chilled them for about ten minutes, then baked them at GM6 for 15-20 mins, until golden and dry. Removed from tin and cooled on a rack.

The caramel that works.

3 tbsp liquid glucose into a small saucepan. Bring it to the boil.

Gradually stir in (I know! Stir it?!) 275g caster sugar. Cook until caramelised. I stopped stirring because it felt so wrong, and swirled instead. I imagine the stirring is OK because the glucose is stabilising it, but that is, frankly, a guess.

Meanwhile, heat 150ml double cream and 1/2 tsp fleur de sel to the boil.

Once the caramel is that lovely amber colour, take it off the heat and add the hot cream, stirring until smooth. Be careful because it really violently expresses itself at this point. There aren’t any pictures of this part because I like my skin smooth rather than blistered and raw.

Return to a low heat and stir until smooth – takes a while, but it gets there. You can (according to the original recipe) use a stick blender, but that was way too scary a concept for me. Boiling sugar, boiling cream and machines that rotate a blade at great speed is not an ideal combination.

Once smooth, take off the heat and stir in 25g unsalted butter then pour into your shells and cool, then chill for 15 mins or so.

I halved the amount of ganache because I had caramel left over and very little room left in the shells to add chocolate to. So, 150g chopped chocolate – some 60%, some 70%

Brought 175ml double cream and -3 tbsp honey to the boil. Poured over the chocolate, stood for a minute, then stirred.

Once smooth, add 40g unsalted butter and stir to melt. (The recipe used more butter, but I hiked some out because it was unnecessary.)

Smooooooooooooth.

Spoon the warm liquid ganache over the caramel, sprinkle with the merest pinch of fleur de sel, cool and chill to set.

Beautiful. (See how the pastry bases have arched in the middle? I should have line each one with more greaseproof and weighted it down when baking)

Now THAT is a nice soft-set, non-runny, caramel-tasting caramel. Would I make it again? Yes, I would. It’s not a hard recipe and (laughing wryly), unlike some recipes out there,  I know it works and it tastes very nice indeed.

Chocolate and Salted Caramel Tarts – adapted from a recipe from Green and Blacks

PRINT THIS RECIPE (opens in a new window)

makes around 18 muffin-tin sized tartlets.
*There will be some caramel and ganache left over, but I was fearful of reducing the recipe too much. The caramel sets firm, but gentle reheating returns it to a sauce. That, with the reheated chocolate ganache, would make a pretty stunning addition to some warm brownies with ice cream… Just a thought… Either that, or make more tartlets to use it all up*
See the original recipe for quantities for an 11″ tart.

Pastry:
375g ready-made dessert (sweet) pastry (LOL!)

Caramel:
3 tbsp liquid glucose
275g caster sugar
150 ml double cream
25g unsalted butter
1/2 tsp fleur de sel (if you’re not sure about the saltiness, use less and add more once the caramel is cooked)

Ganache:
175ml double cream
2-3 tbsp honey
150g dark chocolate, finely chopped
40g unsalted butter

extra fleur de sel to garnish

Preheat oven to GM6/400F/200C. Cut strips of greaseproof to act as a ‘sling’ for each muffin cup.

Roll out pastry, cut circles slightly larger than the diameter of the muffin cup. Ease into the muffin cup on top of your handy paper sling, lightly prick the base of each with a fork and chill for 10 mins. If you wish, you can cut squares of greaseproof to lay in each pastry-lined cup and weigh down with dried pulses or baking beans to keep the base from arching up.
Bake for 15-20 mins, until pastry is cooked, golden and dry.
Remove to a cooling rack to cool fully.

Put the glucose in a saucepan and bring it to the boil. Gradually stir in the caster sugar and cook until caramelised and golden-brown.
At the same time, bring the cream and salt up to the boil in a separate pan.
Remove the caramel from the heat as soon as it has reached the colour and very carefully add the salted cream to the caramel. It will bubble up furiously, so be very cautious.

Return the pan to a low heat and stir until smooth.
Once smooth, remove from heat and stir in the butter until melted and combined.
Pour into the cooled pastry shells.

Cool and chill for 10 minutes.

Place the finely chopped chocolate in a bowl.
Bring the cream and honey to the boil and pour over the chocolate. Stir until melted and smooth.
Stir in the butter until that is melted and combined.
Pour over the caramel-filled tarts, add the tiniest pinch of fleur de sel on top as a clue to the contents and leave somewhere cold to set.

Serve! (Keeps well in the fridge, but remove about 15 mins before serving to get the full flavour)