Failure is not an option, and cursing is required : Milk Chocolate and Caramel Tart

Friends, I'm not going to lie to you. This months Daring Baker recipe was a toughie.

Veron and Patricia chose to challenge us this month with a most decadent looking Milk Chocolate and Caramel Tart by Eric Kayser. The 3 components of the tart are a chocolate shortbread pastry, a caramel filling, and a milk chocolate mousse.

I was down with the mousse, interested in the pastry, but caramel?? AGAIN? If a person can have a food nemesis, caramel is mine. But if I have learned nothing else from the daring baker challenges I have taken part in, I have learned that most of the time I am a better cook than I give myself credit for.

Oh how foolish I am!

I began with the pastry. The recipe called for the dough to be made in the food processor. Since I don't really have that much faith in how strong my fp is, I used my stand mixer. I also cut the recipe for the dough in half, as the full recipe makes enough dough for 3 tarts. The dough is pretty straightforward: flour, sugar, butter, cinnamon, baking powder, cocoa powder, and ground hazelnuts, which I eliminated. I spent ages looking for my cinnamon in our spice cupboard and finally found the empty container. Oh yeah, I ran out of cinnamon about 3 months ago and haven't bought any more. Oops. I rummaged around to see what I could substitute and decided to use Mace. The dough came together fast, and I preheated my oven. I got out my new tart pan and checked the recipe to see how much dough I needed for one tart. "Blah, blah....Form a ball with the dough, cover in plastic wrap, and chill overnight." Wait, what????? Overnight? I had no time for overnight! Way to read the recipe, Sara.

So I did the next best thing and chucked the dough in the freezer for 2 hours. And kept my fingers crossed.

It seemed ok when the freezer time was up, so I weighed out the correct amount and smooshed it into my tart pan, and blind baked (cover the dough with parchment paper and dried lentils or beans) the base.

Next up I melted the chocolate for the mousse so it would not be too warm when mixed into the whipped cream. And then I turned my attention to the caramel.

I tried. I tried SO HARD. 3 TIMES I melted the sugar slowly over low heat. 3 times disaster struck. The first time the sugar got wayyyy too dark before it was even melted. Ok, my heat might have been too high. The second time it was so close to being completely liquid and I removed the pan from the heat to swirl it around to melt the last little bits. When all the sugar was melted I added the cream and...well I guess I had the caramel off the heat for too long because the second the (not cold) cream hit the caramel, it seized right back into a solid mass, floating in cream. By the time I was all cleaned up and ready to try again I was at my wits end and also almost out of sugar. If it didn't work this time, I was not trying again. It worked...almost. There were some hard bits of sugar that just would not melt. So after adding the cream and butter, I strained out the lumps and kept going. After a bit of cooling, eggs and flour were whisked together and then added to the caramel. I had lovely little bits of floury bumps floating in my caramel, but I didn't care.


I poured the caramel into the tart pan and...there wasn't enough room in the pan for all the filling. Why??? At this point I was ready to admit defeat. And then I read the instructions again. "Use a 9" square pan or a 10" round pan." I was using a 9" round pan. I threw the pan in the oven and hoped for the best. After leaving the tart in the oven for double the baking time, it seemed to be barely softly set. I set it to cool, re-melted the chocolate for the topping, and sat down in the living room with a drink.

After sufficient cooling time, I whipped the cream, folded in the melted chocolate and spread the mousse on top of the tart. Since there was no way in hell I was going to make more caramel to decorate the top of the tart, I chopped up leftover chocolate in my mini chopper and tossed the bits on top.


It was very pretty. It tasted fine. But I just couldn't get over the caramel issues and my non-ability to read. But the 10 other people who ate it all loved it. I thought the Mace in the crust was nice, although two people commented on the "different spice" in the dough, and one taster asked if there was pumpkin in the tart. I got a marriage proposal (don't worry Scott, I turned her down) and was told by one lovely girl that I should quit my job and work in a bakery.

???

All participating Daring Bakers are also posting about their tart experiences today. You can go here for links to everyone's blogs.

If you are insane and want to try this recipe yourself, go here.