Chocolate and Hazelnut Praline Tart

I'm not sure if we are in the middle of autumn, or we have skipped it entirely and headed straight into winter. The weather has been so gloomy that my thoughts have definitely turned towards comfort food. This is a rich, dark chocolate tart, sweetened with hazelnut praline. I thought that it would be a lovely autumnal recipe and it's an idea that was floating around in my head for a while before I actually got around to try making it. If you're a Nutella fan, you'll love it (as Josh, my eldest, did). It'd be great though, for a special occasion or party - you only need a small slice as it's so rich, so it will serve loads.

It's funny though, as when I was researching the various elements I wanted to use for this, I then discovered that there was a similar tart on the Good Food website, albeit with a baked filling. This one is a creamy chocolate ganache, set overnight in the fridge. I also used pastry made with ground hazelnuts to up the 'nutty' flavour. Great minds think alike, though, eh? Anyway, here's what I did.

Chocolate and Hazelnut Praline Tart

Ingredients (makes one 9 inch tart)

Hazelnut Pastry
50g icing sugar
25g toasted, ground hazelnuts
75g chilled butter, diced
150g plain flour
1 small egg (under 53g weighed, in the shell)

Hazelnut Praline
85g blanched toasted hazelnuts
50g white caster sugar

Chocolate Ganache
250g 70% dark chocolate, broken into pieces
400ml single cream

An additional 50g or so of plain, dark chocolate (melted) to seal the pastry

First make the pastry. Sift the flour into a medium bowl. Add the ground hazelnuts and icing sugar and stir. (If you need to grind chopped nuts, as I did as they were the only ones other than whole I could find in the supermarket, whizz them in a food processor with some of the icing sugar - this will stop them tuning into an oily paste). Add the chilled butter, and rub into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Make a well in the centre and add about two thirds of the egg, gently bring the dough together, adding a little more egg if needed. The dough will be a very soft one, so don't panic. Wrap the dough in some cling film and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes to firm up (I left mine overnight, so took it out of the fridge about 5 - 10 minutes before rolling out. 

Preheat the oven to Fan 180 / Conventional 200 / Gas 6. Grease a 9 inch tart tin (or pastry ring). Roll out the pastry so that it is about 3mm thick and gently line the tin. Gently press the pastry into the base, but let the pastry overhang the sides of the tin.

Prick the base with a fork, then line with some baking parchment paper and weigh down with some baking beans. Chill in the fridge for 10 - 15 minutes. Place in the oven and bake for approximately 15 minutes. The pastry that overhangs the side of the tin will appear to melt and fall away. Don't worry about this - it's because it is so soft - the pastry inside the tin should stay where it is. Remove the paper and the baking beans and continue baking for a further 10 minutes. The base should be dry and crisp and the top edges golden. Remove from the oven and allow to cool. The pastry should have shrunk away from the sides of the tin a little. Leave to cool.

To make the hazelnut praline, place the sugar in a clean pan and place over a medium heat. Watch it carefully, as it will burn quickly. Don't stir it either, as this will cause it to crystallise - just swirl the pan occasionally instead. Once it has melted and turned a golden amber colour, add the blanched, toasted hazelnuts, and mix to coat in the caramel. If it clumps together, just keep warming it over a gentle heat until it melts again. Carefully - it will be extremely hot - pour the mixture out onto a baking tray lined with parchment paper and allow to cool.

Once cooled, it will have hardened. Gently break into pieces. I then blitzed two thirds of the mix in a processor to give me big chunks of nut, and the remaining third, I whizzed until it was a finer mix. Set aside.

When the pastry shell has cooled, brush the inside with the melted dark chocolate. Allow to cool until set. This will form a seal and help to stop the pastry going soggy.

To make the filling, break up the chocolate and place in a bowl, with the cream, over a saucepan of barely simmering water. Don't let the bottom of the bowl touch the water, or the chocolate will burn. Melt it gently, stirring occasionally until it is well mixed with the cream. Remove from the heat.

To assemble the tart, sprinkle the large chunks of praline over the base of the chocolate lined pastry shell.

Gently pour over the ganache filling. Refrigerate for 30 minutes. Then sprinkle over the finer praline. I put mine around the edge of the tart, but you could put a fine layer all over - the choice is yours.

Put back into the fridge until you need it. It will firm up, so I'd take it out of the fridge about 10 -15 minutes before you want to cut it. The pastry will cut a bit more cleanly then.

As this month's Alphabakes challenge letter is 'N', and this contains lots of lovely nuts, I'm going to send this over to Ros of The More than Occasional Baker, and Caroline, of Caroline Makes. This month, Ros is hosting, so the roundup will appear on her blog towards the end of the month.

Finally, in case you can only find hazelnuts in their skins - I tried two ways of blanching mine (getting the skins off). First, I tried boiling them for 3 minutes in 2 pints of boiling water to which I'd added a tablespoon of bicarbonate of soda.You then drain them in a sieve and run them under some cold water - you can then rub the skins off. This was OK, but the nuts seemed, obviously I 'spose,  wet. So I tried baking them in a 160 Fan oven for 8 minutes, and then rubbing them in a textured tea towel to remove the skins. This was a bit more hard work, but the nuts had a lovely, toasted flavour.

Enjoy,

Susie