Afternoon Tea- Mini Dark Chocolate and Orange Tarts

Everybody loves a tart don't they!?...No not that kind of tart! What kind of blog do you think this is?
I'm talking about little pastry tarts, that adorn the top rows of cake stands at afternoon tea. I'm going to show you a lovely little recipe for dark chocolate and orange mini tarts that you can bake at home.

This recipe is a little more time consuming than some of the others I've posted, with quite a few different steps but if you've got the time the results really are worth it and you're left with some lovely little tarts that are perfect for one person to have at afternoon tea!

I've used a cutter and a muffin tray to make the tart cases however you can get a variety of small tart tins if you wanted to make them a little bigger.

Makes 12 little tarts

Ingredients-

Sweet shortcrust pastry-
200g Plain flour
100g Unsalted Butter
50g Caster sugar
2-3tbsp Cold water

Chocolate orange ganache-
130g Dark Chocolate (The higher the cocoa content the better!)
50g Double Cream
8g Liquid Glucose (Dr Oetker do a tube of this, which is available in most supermarkets)
20g Unsalted Butter- At room temperature, cut into small chunks
1 tbsp Orange zest (About 3 orange's worth)

Decoration-
Dark Chocolate
Orange segments

Method-

For the Pastry-
1) Preheat your oven to 180C
2) Sift the flour into a bowl, cut the butter into cubes and add this to the same bowl.
3)  Rub the butter and flour together until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. (Tip- The best way to do this is to use just the tips of your fingers and thumb)
4) Add the sugar to the bowl and mix it into the flour and butter.
5) Start adding the water to the bowl gradually, stirring the mixture together with your hands- Once the mixture has come together as a dough stop mixing. You don't want to over mix!
6) Wrap the dough in cling film and rest in the fridge for about 30 minutes.
7) After 30 minutes, lightly dust the worktop with flour and roll out your dough until it is about 2-3mm thick the whole way across and cut out using a 3.5 inch fluted cookie cutter and place in your muffin tin, pressing the pastry in lightly.
8) You will need to blind bake your pastry cases- To do this place a small square of greaseproof paper on top of each pastry circle, and fill with rice (Or baking beans if you have them)- This will stop the pastry from expanding when baked. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes. 
9) Remove the tart cases from the oven and remove the rice and greaseproof paper from each one- Then put them back in the oven for a further 5 minutes. Or until a light golden brown.
10)Remove from the oven and let cool in the tin slightly, then remove from the tin and transfer to a wire rack.

For the dark chocolate and orange ganache-
1) Chop the chocolate into small chunks- About the size of chocolate chips.
2) Add the double cream and glucose to jug and heat in the microwave until the cream reaches boiling point (This can also be done in a pan on the hob- Just remove it from the hob when it starts to boil)
3) Add the chocolate to the cream and swirl the jug around- Don't mix at this point
4) After about a minute add the butter and orange zest and start stirring the mixture together- Leave to cool slightly.

Constructing the tarts-
1) When the pastry cases have cooled melt some dark chocolate in a bowl and using your finger or a small brush line the inside of each pastry case with a small amount of chocolate (This will help to prevent the pastry case from going soft with the addition of the ganache)
2) Dip half an orange segment into the rest of the melted chocolate- Enough for each tart and place on a sheet of greaseproof paper for chocolate to set.
4) When the ganache has cooled slightly, spoon it evenly into each pastry case.
5) Place an orange segment on top of each tart.
6) Show off to your friends with your fancy baking work.

Pastry-

 Ganache-

                                    

Constructing-