Chocolate and passion fruit tartlets

Dessert has become a regular thing in our household. Maybe it's got to do with winter setting in or me being inspired by Masterchef to create delicious things, but these days our fridge seems to be full of tarts (both sweet and savoury), creme brulees, cheesecakes, brownies and other goodies.

I was looking for inspiration for dessert recipes the other day and found it in the form of passionfruits. Passionfruit is usually pretty expensive at this time of year but for some reason my local supermarket was selling them for 29 cents each... so I brought 20! What is one to do with 20 passionfruits?

I remember a while back thinking I'd like to put a twist on the traditional lemon tart and use passionfruit juice instead, so that's what I did. I couldn't have been happier with the result. The filling was lusciously creamy and tangy. This will be a recipe I'll repeat the next time passionfruit is ridiculously cheap. The passionfruit juice can be substituted with anything acidic -- lemon, orange, lime or even grapefruit.

Chocolate and passionfruit tartlets (Recipe by Stef at Essential ingredients)

Serves 6

Ingredients

Passionfruit filling

3 eggs

1 egg yolk

150 gr caster sugar

150 ml cream

200 ml passion fruit juice (20 to 30 passionfruits)

Crust

220 gr plain flour (I use White Wings gluten free flour)

30 gr cocoa

100 gr icing sugar

100 gr unsalted butter

pinch salt

Step 1: Make the pastry

To make the pastry, place the flour, sugar, cocoa and butter in a food processer. Blend until the mixture looks like bread crumbs. Add the eggs and blend until combined.

Turn the mixture out onto a lightly floured board (or a silicon mat) and bring together into a ball, kneading until smooth. Wrap the dough in plastic and set to rest in the fridge for 20 minutes.

Step 2: Make the tart cases

Grease six 12 cm-diameter loose-bottomed tart tins.

Remove the pastry from the fridge. Divide the dough into 6 equal portions. Make a disc from one of the pastry portions and place it on a lightly floured board. Roll the pastry so it is around 5cms wider than the tart tin and about 3mm thick. Fit the pastry to the tin, pushing in into the fluted edges and trimming off any excess pastry. Repeat this for the other tins. Put in the fridge for 20 minutes to prevent the dough from shrinking.

Wrap and leftover dough in cling film and store in the fridge for a week or in the freezer for up to a month.

Step 3: Cooking the tart cases

Preheat an oven to 170 C (150 C if you are using a fan forced oven). Place a piece of baking paper in the tart cases and fill with ceramic weight, beans or rice. Blind bake for 10 minutes.

Remove the cases from the oven and increase the temperature to 180 C (160 C if you are using a fan forced oven). Remove the baking paper and the weights. Place the cases back into the oven and cook for a further 4 minutes. Remove and set aside to cool. Reduce the oven temperature to 140 C (120 C fan forced).

Step 4: Preparing the passionfruit juice

Cut each passionfruit in half and scoop out the pulp, trying not to loose too much juice. Place the pulp in a sieve over a bowl. When you’ve done this for half of the passionfruits use the back of a spoon the push out as much juice as possible from the pulp. Repeat this with the other half of the passionfruits. You can keep the passionfruit pulp and use it for another recipe.

Step 5: Making the passionfruit filling

To make the filling, lightly mix together the eggs, egg yolk and caster sugar in a bowl until sugar has dissolved. Stir in the cream and passionfruit juice. The mixture will thicken at this stage and some of the egg yolk may clump together. This is what is meant to happen. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into a jug. Pour the filling into the tartlets shells and bake for 15-20 minutes or until just set. The tartlets are cooked when the filling still wobbles slightly in the centre. Leave to cool to room temperature.