Sunday, January 2, 2011

Baked Sunday Mornings: Almond Joy Tart


Almond Joy was one of my favorite candy when I was younger. I just love the combination of chocolate and coconut cream. This recipe was pretty easy. There are several steps which all have wait times, but none of the steps are all that time consuming. It's just something that you have to plan ahead for just a little.

First you make the almond tart dough and put that in the fridge for at least an hour. You can also make the ganache for the coconut cream filling at the same time because that also has to sit in the fridge for a while (at least 4 hours).

Then the tart dough has to be rolled out and pressed into the tart pans. The recipe recommends using tart pans with removable bottoms, but both Williams Sonoma and Sur la Table just had the smaller tart pans in one piece so that's what I used. I had no problems removing them from the pan after they baked. I cut the recipe in half because after the holidays and my mom's birthday celebration we were feeling a little bit of dessert overload.


After they bake the rest is a piece of cake. You whip the ganache and add the coconut and rum and fill the tart shells. I ended up with more filling than I needed for my tarts. I don't know if my pans were actually a little smaller. After you fill them you have to put them in the fridge while you make the chocolate sauce. I decided to use some 52% Callebaut instead of doing the mixture of milk and dark chocolate. Then you pour the sauce over the tart. Since mine were filled a bit high I ended up with chocolate sauce running over the edge of the tart. It kinda looked like the Bostini I made a month or so ago.


Daniel and I split one after dinner, and we both really enjoyed it. The tart shell was a little hard. I might have cooked it a little too long, but that didn't really affect the flavor. It was really delicious.

6 comments:

  1. I love how your chocolate spills over! I agree, they were delicious. Most went to my neighbors because my husband doesn't like coconut.

    We have some things in common - I'm also in high tech, and have been off and on from running because I'm injury-prone. I haven't done any triathlons in a few years, but since you train with team rogue you must know my friend Amy!

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  2. @Sheri, how cool! Yes, Amy is a friend of mine as well. She was my husband's coach a couple times, and then we were both in Team Rogue a couple seasons. I'm barely starting to run again as of this last week, but I'm hoping to get back eventually. I'm pretty injury prone as well. Seeing Amy's blog is kinda what got me started baking and blogging. Do you know Amy from running or elsewhere?

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  3. I'm off running right now and am working myself up to 10 miles of walking a week before I start easing into running again (sigh).

    How funny. Amy's blog is named Not as Good as Pork Cracklins? It's her funny (as so not true) take on my blog name, Pork Cracklins. We share a love of cooking and baking.

    I'm in the SF Bay Area, but I know her through a friend (her husband and my friend worked together at IBM a long time ago). Amy came out and stayed with our friend when she was running Big Sur one year. I was his housemate at the time, and we just clicked!

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  4. @Sheri, good luck on getting back to running. I certainly know how frustrating that is. I agree that there is definitely nothing "not as good" about Amy's blog. Everything she makes looks picture perfect.

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  5. Woah, you went for it with that chocolate! Well done!

    I definitely have to do about 10 extra miles this week just in penance for the portion of tart I ate.

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