Food & Drink

Exclusive recipe: Pierre Hermé Milk Chocolate Tart

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As a special treat for our chocolate lovers, Pierre Hermé exclusively gave us a recipe to share with you. Hermé’s chocolate tart is not available in London, so this is a sure-show stopper for any dinner party. Send us your pictures, and we’ll tweet them! (shairah@chelseamonthly.com).

For 10/12 people

Composition
• Sweet pastry
• Milk chocolate ganache
• Soft caramel
• Bits of nougat
• Crushed, salted grilled peanuts

Sweet pastry

• 300 g butter
• 60 g almond powder
• 190 g icing sugar
• 1/2 g vanilla powder
• 120 g eggs
• 2 g of fleur de sel de Guérande • 500 g plain flour

– Knead the butter to render it homogeneous then incorporate the ingredients one by one in order.

– Flatten out and keep in the refrigerator
in shrink wrap. This quantity of pastry allows you to make at least two tarts. You can conserve any surplus in the freezer to use it at a later time.

Bottom of the sweet pastry

– Roll out the pastry to 2mm thickness with a rolling pin and detail a disc of 30-cm diameter for a tart mould of 26cm diameter. Place it on a tray in the refrigerator for 30 minutes before you bottom the tart. Grease the circle or mould with butter, bottom it and cut the surplus of pastry.

– Slide the bottom in the refrigerator.

Baking

– Place the bottom on a black tray covered with silicone paper, garnish with a disc of silicone paper of 30-cm diameter, fringed. Fill it with dried beans and slide into an oven at 170°C for 20-25 minutes approximately.

Soft caramel

• 100 g caster sugar
• 20 g glucose
• 20 g salted butter
• 100 g liquid cream (32% fat)

– Melt the butter bit by bit, incorporate
the glucose, leave it to caramelise
the maximum just before the caramel becomes bitter. Mix in the butter then the whipped cream, mixing energetically and cook the mixture at 108°C. Clear away and store at room temperature.

– At the time of using the caramel, melt it slowly in a microwave or in a bain-marie.

Milk chocolate ganache

• 300 g liquid cream
• 450 g Jivara (Valrhona) milk chocolate

– Classic process of a ganache. Boil
the cream and pour onto the crushed chocolate in three successive workings.

– Mix with a spatula in small concentric circles going from the centre of the mixing bowl and expanding outwards. Add half of the remainder to the mixture. Proceed in this manner to mix. Use immediately.

Assembly

• 60 g fragments / bits of Montélimar nougat (optional)
• 80/100 g grilled, salted peanuts

– Crush the peanuts with a roller. Pour a little soft caramel on the bottom of the tart, sprinkle with grilled salted peanuts and bits of nougat, and slide in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. Fill to the top with milk chocolate ganache. Leave in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Finishing

– Decorate with pretty shavings of milk chocolate, well curled.

Consumption guidelines

Keep out of the refrigerator.

Notes, tips and tricks

– This cake is a tribute to the SNICKERS chocolate bar which children love throughout the whole world. The milk chocolate ganache, nougat and caramel form a very sweet whole which balances out the grilled and salted peanuts which make it a delicious delicacy for both adults and children.

– The use of milk chocolates other than that recommended in this recipe will require
a readjustment of the latter by increasing the measure of chocolate by 10 to 15%.