Delicious tarts with hazelnut chocolate cream

I came up with the idea to cook this tarts cause I wanted to make a chocolate paste with finely ground hazelnuts to add seductive flavour to the paste. But then I thought it was not good idea to eat just paste and so I needed some basis to put it on. Therefore I decided to try sugar pastry with big pieces of hazelnuts inside. 


The result was awesome! You can read comments of my friends who tasted this tarts.

Ingredients:
hazelnuts for pastry and cream - 100 g.
For pastry
flour - 3 table spoon
sugar - 200 g. (1 glass)
egg yolks - 4
butter - 100 g
pieces of hazelnuts 
For cream
milk - 250 ml.
egg yolks - 3
sugar - 100 g.
flour - 1 table spoon
butter - 125 g.
cocoa powder - 2 table spoon
hazelnuts ground

Cooking

First we need to prepare hazelnuts for different purposes. We will need three types of hazelnut: completely ground like a flour for cream, big pieces for pastry and medium pieces for topping tarts.

I used coffee grinder for trituration hazelnuts but any food processor with this kind of function can do this too. During grinding process big pieces left which I put on a separate plate. Some of nuts I have pounded into medium pieces.

Next we need to knead a dough. For this separate 4 egg yolks from whites and mix up thoroughly with sugar until it the mixture will will have light colour.

Then add 100 g. of melted butter and 3 table spoon of flour. Mix everything and pour into the dough big pieces of hazelnuts. Pastry should look like shown on the picture.

Put a sheet of baking paper on a pan and using spoon place small portions of pastry on it. Leave more space then shown in a picture because it will melt in oven and take more place. So my pastry took almost all space while baking. Bake it in oven preheated to 150 Celsium during 15-20 minutes. It will be still soft - it is ok, it will harden when cool down.

While pastry is baking in oven we can start cooking chocolate cream! First separate 3 egg yolks from whites and mix them up thoroughly with 100 g. of sugar. Add 1 table spoon of flour and a pinch of vanilla powder.

Add 250 ml. (1 glass) of warm milk and put a pot on a low heat and stir continuosly. It will get hot slowly and your task not to let it lump so you need constatntly stir it until it will get thick. But do not let it start boiling.

When it will get thick like shown on a picture below take it from the heat add there 2 table spoon of cocoa powder and ground hazelnuts. Mix it up thoroughly and put the pot in a cold water. Let it cool down for a while. When it will become of a normal temperature add 125 g of butter and stir it up with a mixer.

At this moment we should have cooked cream and cookies and we only need to put them together to complete this dessert. Just put some cream each cookie with a knife or a spoon, then top it with medium pieces of hazelnuts. Here we go! Make tea and enjoy tarts! Yours Pavlo.