Double chocolate tarts with almond cream butter and Marsala fig

This tart was born after almost 3 days of planning. Actually, I wanted to bake a simple roasted fig tart with puff pastry, but I was too lazy to prepare the pastry and I didn't want to buy. You can say what you want, but home made puff pastry is unbeatable. So I had to figure out something else, I checked a whole lot of cookbooks and blogs for inspiration, but I didn't find anything where I had the feeling: yeah, that is what I was looking for. I only knew one thing for sure. The figs are going to be poached in Marsala.

That fact took me straight to a chocolate ganache. So far so good. At the end the picture was clear: I prepared a cocoa tart dough and made an almond cream butter as the first layer. In order to prevent almond layer from getting wet from the poached figs, it got covered by a dark chocolate ganache, then I topped the whole with a slice of fig. It looked quite okay, but I felt there is something missing, something fluffly. The solution was floating right in front of my eyes: white chocolate mousse. That was the fig dessert, I have been looking for!


Ingredients:
for the tart dough (adapted from Aran):
140 g cold butter
150 g sugar
pinch of salt
1 egg
1 egg white
310 g flour
50 g cocoa powder
4 g baking powder

Cream butter with sugar and salt. Whisk in the egg and the egg white, then add the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder. Knead a dough, flatten and put it in the fridge for at least 1 hour. I have used about half of it, and that made 4 tarts, you can easily freeze the rest of the pastry. Blind bake the tart shells at 180°C.

for the figs:
4 figs
250 ml Marsala
30 g sugar
1 piece of cinnamon
3 peppercorns


Prepare the figs the day before. You won't need all for the tarts, but there is gonna be some white chocolate mousse left, and you can serve them with it. Cut through the skin of the bottom of the figs. Bring Marsala with sugar and the spices to the boil and poach the figs for 5 minutes over low heat. Let it cool and put it to the fridge over night.

for the ganache:
75 g butter, room temperature
80 g chocolate (70% cocoa)
55 ml milk

Cream butter with a help of a fork and set aside. Chop chocolate and bring the milk to the boil. Pour some milk into the chocolate and stir, then add the rest of the milk and stir until it is molten. When the temperature reaches 60°C stir in the butter.


for the almond cream butter:
50 g butter
50 g sugar
50 g almond flour
1 egg
10 g flour

Cream butter and sugar, add the almond flour, the egg and the flour. Cover the blind baked tart shells bottom with the batter and bake at 180°C until it browns. When it is cool smear the ganache on top and place a slice of fig in the middle.

for the white chocolate mousse:
(adapted from Pierre Hermé)125 g white chocolate
75 ml cream
2 1/2 egg whites
10 g sugar

Bring cream to the boil and pour it over the chopped chocolate. Stir until the chocolate is molten. Beat egg whites with the sugar and fold it into the chocolate mixture. Pipe it on top of the tarts and leave it in the fridge for at least 6 hours.