Dark Chocolate Hazelnut Tiramisu Tart: a nutty, buttery pastry, silky baked chocolate ganache and pillowy soft espresso mascarpone cream. Jump to recipe.
Hello! It’s been an unintentional 3 month hiatus and I’m not quite sure how it’s already June. There was a scary amount of work (a recent 140 hour fortnight definitely bordered on illegal), an adventure to Western Australia (beaches and wineries and more beaches) and I finally made it back to Aotearoa aka the homeland for a weekend under the new and already suspended COVID safe travel bubble. Already suspended because we are in lockdown yet again in Melbourne. Round 4.0. Hence the new post I guess: you know I like to cook when I can’t leave the house.
I don’t want to linger too long on our virus resurgence and lockdown repeat, but suffice to say it feels a little (a lot) like 2020 all over again. The chilly autumn mornings, the weekend queues outside bakeries as everyone attempts to eat their feelings via the best carbohydrates Melbourne has to offer, the classic walk + takeaway coffee catch ups and multiple house dinners because for once we don’t have anywhere else to be. Even Masterchef is back on. The best: a house brunch (french toast using @bakerbleu challah with Ottolenghi’s rum spiked mascarpone creme and caramelised bananas, if you must know. It was outrageously good). The worst: the return of live streams of case numbers and daily anxiety inducing updates. Only this year there’s an extra layer of disappointment and fatigue that even 2020 couldn’t manage. We were just piecing ourselves back into some semblance of normality, you know? It’s like we almost passed go but went directly to jail.
What you CAN have in lockdown (or not in lockdown, you lucky things) is this dark chocolate hazelnut tiramisu tart. I’ve been obsessed – actually, it’s probably fair to say that Melbourne has been obsessed – by tiramisu lately. We had the choc-a-misu version at Embla, a scoop dumped unceremoniously on a plate layered with rich dark chocolate cake. The more subtle individual (or for two, if you feel like sharing) version by Capitano with finely chopped roasted hazelnuts throughout. The traditional extra-large ladyfinger and cream-laden cube at Gilson, this time best shared – we almost ordered two and our waitress looked at us like we might have three heads. A shout out to possibly my favourite of them all at Lilian back in Auckland.
This version is a whole lot less like a traditional tiramisu and a whole lot more like a chocolate tart, but the coffee mascarpone cream brings it all together so we’ll call it tiramisu anyway. It’s inspired by a tart at Coffee Pen in Auckland (which you should 100% go to if you’re not also barred from entry to the country) that I’ve seen floating on the internet but have never actually tasted. This is what I think it might taste like. A dark chocolate roasted hazelnut crust, which is a little on the crumbly side thanks to the hazelnuts but just patch it back up in the tin and no one will know the difference; a silky smooth baked ganache filling that you whisk together and bake for 15 minutes until it’s set with a tiny jiggle; and finally a creamy espresso-heavy mascarpone – swirl it with the back of a spoon and dust it all with cocoa. Call yourself Nigella and eat the remnants for breakfast the next day. You deserve it, lockdown or not.
It’s also a perfect make ahead dinner party dessert: do the crust the day before, bake the chocolate layer at some point in the day and just make sure to do the mascarpone within a couple of hours of when you plan to serve.
- 75 g roasted hazelnuts
- 170 g plain flour
- 30 g dutch process cocoa
- 30 g caster sugar
- 150 g cold butter cubed
- 200 g dark chocolate at least 70%
- 1/2 cup cream
- 1/4 cup whole milk
- 1 small egg lightly beaten
- 1 teaspoon instant coffee
- 250 ml cream (I cup)
- 3 tablespoons icing sugar
- Double shot espresso approx 3 tablespoons, cooled
- 250 g mascarpone
- 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
- 1 tablespoon dutch cocoa powder to dust
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Preheat oven to 200°C and roast hazelnuts until golden and fragrant, about 5-7 minutes. Rub most of the skins off when cool enough to handle.
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Blitz hazelnuts in food processor until finely ground.
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Add flour, cocoa, caster sugar and blitz to combine. Add cold butter and pulse until it reaches a bread-crumb like consistency. Add 1-2 tbsp ice water and pulse a couple of times until it starts to hold together.
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Tip out onto a lightly floured surface and bring together with your hands into a cohesive disc.
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Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight.
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Grease a 26cm tart tin. Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured bench to about 3mm thick and line the tart tin, pressing firmly into the sides of the tin. The pastry will be hard to roll out at first but don’t worry, it will soften as you go. If it rips at all or you find that one edge is too thin, use the leftover pastry scraps to patch it back together.
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Trim the pastry to form a neat edge – I usually just roll my rolling pin over the edge to cut through the pastry. Gently press the pastry lining the sides of the tin up to create a 1-2mm rim over the edge of the tin. This prevents it from shrinking too much during baking
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Rest the lined tart tin in the freezer for 30 minutes.
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Preheat the oven to 180°C . Line the frozen pastry case with foil and fill with baking beans or dry rice, then blind bake for 20 minutes. Remove the foil/beans and bake for a further 5 minutes.
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Leave to cool slightly while you make the filling.
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Reduce the oven temperature to 130°C.
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Very finely chop the dark chocolate into a medium bowl.
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In a small pot, bring the cream, milk and instant coffee to simmer. Pour over the chocolate and leave to stand for 5 minute. Whisk with a fork to combine into a silky ganache. Stir in the beaten egg until smooth.
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Pour into the blind baked tart and bake until just set on top but still has a little bit of wobble – 15-20minutes. Set aside to cool completely.
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Beat cream and icing sugar to soft peaks. Place mascarpone in a separate bowl and fold in 3 tbsp cooled espresso to just combine. Gently fold in the cream mix then hand whisk gently just until medium peaks form – be very careful here as it is easy to go too far and turn it into butter. You want it stiff enough to hold swirls when you dollop it on top of the chocolate tart – see photos for reference.
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Dollop the cream on top of the tart and use the back of a spoon or offset spatula to create swirls. Sift cocoa powder over the top to dust.
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Either serve immediately or refrigerate for up to an hour prior to serving. Best on the day it is made but will keep for a 24-48 hrs in the fridge in a sealed container.
This is such a brilliant recipe, thank you – truly delicious and such a hit at the end of lunch ! Thank you
So happy to hear, thank you for letting me know!