Chocolate Bar Tart with Pecan and Salted Caramel

This is a dangerous creation, I’ll admit it. I don’t know exactly why I decided to make something this risky, but I suppose that’s what happens when you’re stuck with a forced vacation 🙂

Here’s the thing: Paris is on vacation. Our French friends have already left the city, most of them off toward the beaches, some toward the mountains, but one thing is certain, most of them are not here. It can be hard for us to wrap our heads around the idea that businesses simply close for two to four weeks, but it really does happen. It’s not a cliché.

The logic goes like this: if a business stays open while its owner is relaxing on a beach in Normandy, the staff will keep bothering him with questions, turning to him whenever something goes wrong, and in general his mind will never fully disconnect from work. But when the business is completely closed, there’s nothing coming through from it. No sudden problem that needs handling from afar. Everything simply goes quiet, and the mind is set free.

Les vacances, the great summer holiday, is one of the calendar high points for every French person. It’s practically the essence of life here: people work in order to live and rest, not the other way around. Vacation talk starts as early as April or May, and everyone picks their own dates, usually somewhere between mid-July (Bastille Day) and the end of August.

There’s no fixed rule to it, and no way to know far in advance who’s leaving when. It only becomes clear about a month or two ahead. Every year all our spreadsheets shift and update as we try to figure out whether and where we can still run culinary tours during this stretch, right up until the day it’s no longer possible, because most of the businesses connected to our tours have shut their doors. That’s the day we too head off on our own forced vacation, about two to three weeks, until the rentrée, the big return from the holidays.

As you can imagine, when we’re not out leading tours, I suddenly have plenty of time for creating desserts and writing. And I love this quiet so much: the calm Paris, without the crush on the metro, without the rush of people racing to work through the streets. There’s something in it that reminds me of my morning run, the stillness before the storm, the real Paris without Sephora’s makeup on.

So, as part of my baking-and-writing vacation, here is my newest creation: a tart shaped like a chocolate bar, built from a wonderfully crisp shortcrust base, a layer of salted caramel, and a milk chocolate bar studded with toasted pecans. Three layers of happiness, and easy enough to make if you have a silicone chocolate-bar mold.

By the way, even without a chocolate-bar shaped mold, you can improvise with a different one and simply create a chocolate surface without the classic squares. Get creative 🙂 As for quantities, you can make several bars at once, each with a different chocolate: milk, dark, white, or blond. The shortcrust pastry makes enough for a few tarts this size. See my suggestion below for using the leftover dough.

Chocolate Bar Tart with Pecan and Salted Caramel
Silicone mold in the shape of a classic chocolate bar

Ingredients

Shortcrust Pastry:
170g all-purpose flour
20g ground almonds
60g confectioners’ sugar
2g salt (pinch)
100g cold butter, cut into cubes
30g egg (about half a medium egg)

Chocolate Pecan Bar (for one bar):
100–150g milk chocolate, depending on mold size
About 12 toasted pecans

Salted Caramel Cream (should be prepared in advance): recipe inside

Preparation
1. Shortcrust Pastry: In a food processor, grind together all the pastry ingredients except the egg. Pulse in short bursts until you get a sandy texture.
2. Add the egg and continue mixing only until the dough just starts to come together. It’s best to handle the dough as little as possible.
3. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface, knead briefly to form a smooth ball, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for two hours.
4. Lightly flour the work surface and roll out the dough to a sheet about 5mm thick
5. Using a knife and ruler, cut a rectangle from the dough the size of the chocolate bar. Prick with a fork to prevent the dough from puffing up during baking, then refrigerate for one hour.
*You can shape the leftover dough into cookies or additional rectangles, and freeze it or bake and store it in an airtight container for more bars later on.
6. Preheat the oven to 170°C, (340°F).
7. Bake the dough rectangle for 14-16 minutes, until golden brown and fully baked. Remove from the oven and place on a cooling rack.
8. Chocolate Pecan Bar: Melt the chocolate over a bain-marie. Tempering it is highly recommended for a shiny, stable bar.
9. Set the silicone mold on a cutting board and pour in the chocolate, filling the mold completely. Tap the board gently against the counter or work surface to release any air bubbles.
10. Arrange the toasted pecans neatly along the back of the bar.
11. If the chocolate is tempered, let it set fully at cool room temperature. If it isn’t tempered, place the mold in the refrigerator until fully set.

Assembly
12. Pipe or spread salted caramel onto the base of the shortcrust rectangle. Place the caramel in the center of the rectangle, since it will spread out toward the edges once the layers are pressed together.
13. Unmold the chocolate bar and place it on top of the caramel-covered pastry layer, squares facing up, of course.
14. Press together gently and dig in. It can also be kept in an airtight container.

Bon-Appétit
Sharon