Nectarine and Chocolate Tartlets

My mother-in-law makes pies everything. Apple pies, onion pies, rhubarb pies, chocolate pies, you name it. So when my husband announced that his parents were coming to visit and see our apartment for the first time, I decided to try my hand at pies, too.

My mother-in-law took a bite and affirmed, surprised, "It's milchig." (Well, of course. I know who raised me-- the lady who brings chocolate chip cookies to the dentist's office.)

I started with a Julia Child recipe for sweet short paste, threw a bunch of fruit inside, and drizzled the whole thing with chocolate. If that's not enough description for you, here it is broken down. This recipe makes 12 cupcake-sized tartlets.

For the shell:

1 1/3 cup flour, scooped and leveled (210 g)
3 tablespoons granulated sugar (38 g) (I added a little extra-- she calls for 2 tablespoons, 25g)
1/4 teaspoon salt (1g)
11 tablespoons cold butter cut into small pieces (Here Julia calls for vegetable shortening to be mixed in with her butter to make a flakier crust. If you have that, you can use 3 tablespoons shortening and 8 tablespoons butter. I didn't have shortening, so I went with an all-butter crust. You don't miss the flakiness, I promise.)
5 tablespoons cold water (75g)

For the filling:
3 medium nectarines
1 tablespoon sugar (13 g)
4 squares of whatever chocolate you like-- I used a Frey dark chocolate


If you have a food processor, put in all the ingredients except the water into the bowl, give it a good whirr, and then add the water and mix until it begins to mass on the blades. Then do the fraisage, which is when you use the heel of your hand to smear the dough and really get the flour and fat blended. After each smear, gather it up again. Then put it in the fridge to get cold.

I don't have a food processor, so I did it all by hand. After admonishing us to work quickly so we don't warm the butter too much, Julia tell us to place all the ingredients except the water in a bowl and "rub the flour and fat together rapidly between the tips of your fingers until the fat is broken into pieces the size of oatmeal flakes." You'll mix it more later, no worries.

Add the cold water and blend with one hand while gathering the dough into a mass. If you need more water, add it. Then do the fraisage and refrigerate for two hours of overnight, or freeze for about an hour. I left mine in our tiny fridge for 2 days, and it was totally fine when I took it out Sunday morning.


To roll out the dough:
Preheat your over to about 400ºF (200ºC).

I worked on a floured silicone mat, which made the dough easier to handle. If it gets too warm, return it to the fridge for 15 minutes. Roll it out, always away from you, until it fills your mat. If you wanted to make one big tart, you could roll it until it was about 5 centimeters bigger than your tart pan, but I wanted to make small ones. So once my dough was rolled out, I used a glass to cut out circles and then pressed them into my silicone cupcake sheet. Use a fork to prick the bottom of the tarts to keep them from rising. Once all the dough was used up, and the tart shells were in their little cupcake homes, I used cupcake liners, turned them inside out, pressed them into the dough and filled them with rice. If you have pie weights, though, they will probably work better. I usually improvise. When your oven is ready, stick them in for 8-10 minutes, until they start to have a little color. This helps waterproof them a bit.

Meanwhile, pick your fruit. If you have peaches or plums or nectarines, it's probably best to peel them. (probably oranges too.) The easiest way to do this is to drop the fruit in boiling water for 15 seconds, fish them out and drop them in a bowl of cold water, then literally rub them with your hands. The peels should come right off. If it doesn't, you can also use a paring knife to help you. Slice your fruit. Watch your fingers.

Pull your tart shells out of the oven, take out the papers and the rice, and bake for another few minutes. Pull them out again and let them cool slightly.

Julia recommends putting sugar and butter in the bottom of the tart shells, piling the fruit on top, and cooking until they're syrupy. I have no doubt that it would be delicious. However, there's definitely enough butter in this recipe to get by without extra in the bottom. Instead, I put the slice fruit in the shell, sprinkle a little sugar on top, and bake it at 375ºF (190ºC). Julia recommends around 40 minutes for the full tart; I've found that 25 minutes is enough for these tartlets. But my gas oven plays a very hot and cold game with me, so it might be different next time.

For the chocolate drizzle, I took a regular bar of dark swiss chocolate and broke off 4 squares. We don't have a microwave or double boiler, so I improvised a bain marie.I put the chocolate in a little glass ramekin with a lid and put the ramekin in a bowl, then poured hot water around it (careful to keep the water out of the chocolate-- it will seize.) I stirred for a few minutes, put the lid on, stirred, put the lid on, and finally the chocolate was melted. I used a little kitchen brush to dribble chocolate over the whole cupcake sheet, and imagined myself to be Jackson Pollock. Then I popped the tartlets out of the silicon sheet, put them on long white plates, and served them to my surprised mother-in-law.

No idea how long these stay fresh for, but they're delicious for at least an hour after they come out of the oven. :)