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Treat someone you love with these strawberry and champagne truffle tarts – a sweet shortcrust pastry tart filled with rich milk chocolate and champagne ganache and topped with champagne soaked strawberries.

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Seeing as it’s Valentine’s Day next week I thought I’d get creative and make something a little over the top and indulgent to celebrate.

I don’t really do Valentine’s Day as it’s a week before my birthday and I’d much rather wait and celebrate that instead. However, I’m definitely up for a bit of Valentine’s baking. It’s the perfect excuse to get carried away in the kitchen, using the most indulgent ingredients, and making things look extra pretty – I always love an excuse to get my heart-shaped cutters out. I was seriously tempted to get some heart-shaped tart tins too but I wasn’t sure how far was too far with all the hearts. If you really want to impress someone then I think this is an extra step you should take (and make sure you send me a picture if you do!).

These tarts are inspired by my love of chocolate making as recently I’ve been experimenting with champagne truffles. They’re still a bit of a work in progress but as part of my experiments I’d made some lovely champagne ganache and thought it would make a gorgeous tart filling. I decided to top these tarts with strawberries because, as every Pretty Woman fan will know, strawberries bring out the flavour of the champagne. Just to make sure they were extra champagne-y I soaked the strawberries in the champagne before popping them onto the tart. Seeing as I had a bit of champagne left in the bottle I also enjoyed a nice glass as I cooked 🙂 .

Strawberry & Champagne Truffle Tarts

Active Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 20 minutes

Makes 2 individual tarts – you can make more if you’re having a romantic meal for a group, just multiply up the ingredients. The  recipe actually makes enough pastry for 8 tarts but it freezes brilliantly, just defrost it fully in the fridge before you want to use it.

Equipment

• 2 individual tartlet tins
• One large bowl and a couple of smaller bowls
• Weighing scales
• Rolling pin
• Cling film
• Fork
• Wire cooling rack
• Measuring spoons
• Small saucepan
• Wooden spoon

Ingredients

For the pastry

• 275g plain flour
• 40g caster sugar
• 125g unsalted butter
• 1 medium egg
• A little vegetable oil for greasing the tins

NOTE – This recipe makes enough pastry for 8 tarts as that’s the smallest amount of pastry you can make with one egg. You can wrap the excess pastry in cling film and freeze it to use again another day. If you really don’t want to make excess pastry, simply beat the egg in a separate bowl and weight out about 12g to add to the other ingredients (which should all be divided by 4).

For the champagne ganache

• 75g good quality milk chocolate
• 1 tbsp double cream
• 3 tbsp champagne (or other sparkling wine)

For the champagne soaked strawberries

• 6 medium-large strawberries
• 2 tbsp champagne
• ½ tbsp caster sugar

Method

Make the pastry

1. Sift the plain flour (275g) into a large bowl and add the caster sugar (40g).
2. Cut the butter (125g) into cubes, add it to the flour and sugar and rub it in with you fingertips until it has the consistency of breadcrumbs.
3. Add the egg to the mixture and use your hands to bring everything together. If it seems a little dry, knead it a few times until it comes together.
4. Wrap the pastry in cling film and pop it into the fridge to chill for about half an hour.

While the pastry is chilling macerate your strawberries (that’s basically fancy talk for soaking them in the sugar and champagne)

5. Cut your strawberries in half (or whatever romantic shape you desire).
6. Put them into a shallow bowl or dish and add the champagne (2 tbsp) and caster sugar (½ tbsp). Mix well then cover with clingfilm and refrigerate until you’re ready to top your tarts.

Now’s the time to take a break for a few minutes, pour yourself a glass of the champagne and relax for a bit until your pastry has finished chilling 🙂

Once your pastry has chilled make the tarts

7. Preheat your oven to 200ºC/180ºC fan.
8. Lightly grease your tart tins with a little vegetable oil.
9. Remove your pastry from the fridge and roll it out until it is very thin and slightly larger than your tin. I like to roll out the pastry between two sheet of cling film as this makes it easier to roll out to the desired thickness and also means I don’t have any trouble with it sticking to the work surface or rolling pin. I also like to roll out each tart individually as this makes it much easier.
10. Carefully lift the pastry into the tart tin and ease it into the sides so that it is in full contact with the tin. If you accidentally make a hole then simply patch it up with a little spare pastry.
11. Trim off any excess pastry using a sharp knife or rolling your rolling pin across the top of the tin.
12. Use a fork to prick holes across the bottom and up the sides of the pastry. It’s essential that the holes go all the way through to allow air to escape while the tart shell cooks otherwise the bottom will puff up and the sides will collapse.
13. Place the tins on a baking tray and pop into the oven for 12-14 minutes until just golden.
14. Once cooked remove the tarts from the oven, leave them in their tins for about 10 minutes to harden a little and then move them onto a wire rack to cool completely.

While the tart shells are cooling make your champagne ganache.

15. Put you double cream (1 tbsp) into a bowl.
16. Put your milk chocolate (75g) into a small saucepan and melt on a very low heat, stirring constantly until it has fully melted.
17. Remove the chocolate from the heat and add to the double cream. Beat the chocolate into the cream with a wooden spoon as quickly as you can (you have to work quickly to stop the chocolate going grainy). Once combined, add in the champagne (3 tbsp) a bit at a time, beat in each addition before adding more. You may want to taste as you go along, stop early if you’re happy with the flavour or add a bit more if you think it needs it.
18. Once all of the champagne has been combined, pour the ganache into the cooled tart shells.
19. Top your tarts with the strawberries and serve.

This is the estimated nutritional information per tart. Please refer to my guide to Charlotte’s Lively Kitchen nutritional information if you want to learn more about how this is calculated.

Free From/Suitable For…

• Suitable for vegetarians
• Corn-Free
• Nut-Free
• Soy-Free

The ingredients for this recipe are commonly available free from all these allergens. However, please ensure you double-check allergen information for all ingredients.

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I’m sharing this recipe with We Should Cocoa at Tin & Thyme and Perfecting Patisserie at Baking Queen 74