Vegan chocolate and salted caramel tarts
a to-die-for dessert. they are made up of shortcrust chocolate pastry, salted caramel and dark chocolate ganache layers. the world doesn’t need any more energy balls, it needs elegant and decadent desserts that just happen to be vegan
PASTRY
120 g gf all purpose flour
a pinch of salt
6 level tsp icing sugar, monkfruit
6 level tsp raw cacao
40 ml / 2½ tbsp olive oil
20-30 ml / 1½-2 tbsp water (at room temperature)
CARAMEL SAUCE
½ cup sugar (I used brown coconut cane)
½ cup full fat coconut milk + ¼ cup (see instructions)
¾ level tsp fine salt
CHOCOLATE GANACHE
75 g dark (70% cocoa) chocolate
60 ml / ¼ cup full fat coconut milk*
30 ml / 2 tbsp water
2 tsp maple syrup (optional)
CARAMEL
1. Spread an even layer of sugar at the bottom of a dry pan or pot. Heat up sugar on a medium heat (I used setting 3 out of 6). Refrain from stirring it, although if your pan has hot spots, you may need to gently manuevre unmelted sugar into a hot spot. Meanwhile, warm up ½ cup of coconut milk in a separate pot.
2. Once all the sugar has melted, take the pan off the heat and slowly stir in warmed up coconut milk and then add salt. Be very careful as even though warming milk up minimizes this, caramel may be splattering at this point and it will be very hot.
3. There is a chance that once you add coconut milk, some of the caramel will harden into big lumps. What you need to do is to return the pan to the stove and set on a very low setting (I used 2 out of 6) to allow these lumps to melt away. Make sure you keep on stirring the mixture. Now, because the longer you cook your caramel sauce the more sticky and less sauce-like it will become, if you do need to bring it back to the stove to melt any stubborn lumps, add another ¼ cup / 60 ml of coconut milk to the pan to ensure that once your lumps have dissolved the caramel will retain sauce consistency. Do not panic if it appears to be too runny at first, caramel thickens as it cools down. If it does end up being too runny, you can always reduce it gently again.
CHOCOLATE GANACHE
1. Melt the chocolate very slowly (I used setting 1 out of 6) over a water bath. Once melted, remove from heat, but keep the bowl with chocolate over the hot water. Start adding coconut milk whisking gently the whole time. At this point the chocolate may seem to have seized a little, don’t worry, keep on whisking gently and any lumps will eventually melt away. Once you have added all coconut milk, add water stirring the whole time.
2. Once you have a smooth ganache, add 2 tsp of maple syrup – this is not strictly necessary as I find that bitter chocolate provides a nice contrast against very sweet caramel, but that’s up to you.
3. Let it cool off completely before pouring it into cool pastry cases.
ASSEMBLY
1. Pour about a level tbsp of cool caramel sauce into cool (that’s important) pastry cases.
2. Pour cool chocolate ganache on top of the caramel. Let the tarts set for a few hours at room temperature. You can also put them into the fridge if you want be able to eat them sooner. 3. If you want to store these overnight, I found that the best way to do it is to keep them in a box covered with a piece of cling film at room temperature (as opposed to the fridge).
Notes
I used mini tart moulds that have a diameter of 8 cm and height of 2 cm.
