Something a little different
Looking for a Vegan Christmas dessert? Something that is a real show stopper but also
Don’t be scared
There is no need to worry, this may sound complicated or difficult, but it really isn’t. There are 3 sections to this recipe, all of which are easy and very straight forward.
In the first step, we will be making the pastry, super easy recipe and can be made up ahead of time. Then in the second step, it is time for the velvety vegan chocolate mousse. Then on to the third step, the oh so tasty meringue.
It is quite a lot to do in one day, so you could always make the pastry cases a couple of days before and store them in an airtight container for a few days. Then make your chocolate mousse the day before you want to serve the tarts, finally make your meringue on the day.
But where does the Almond & Maca nut butter come into it, I hear you cry? This comes from the amazing Mindful Bites, who sell amazing nut butters, second to none. You will see a link below to the nut butter I used for this recipe, definitely a website worth checking out if you love nut butters as much as I do.
These are great little tarts to have as a dessert or even use as part of a buffet. I have made individual tarts but the recipe would also work as one large tart to
The Recipes
The Pastry
This is a great little pastry to have in your baking arsenal, it can be used as savoury or sweet. It can be a little short (crumbly), try to minimise handling it, if all else fail, just patch up any cracks with more pastry.
Ingredients
- 400g Plain Flour
- 12 tablespoons Olive oil
- ½ cup of cold water
Method
- Place all ingredients into a bowl and start pulling together with a fork.
- The ingredients should start coming together like breadcrumbs. If the mixture is too wet then add a Tablespoon of flour until you have a breadcrumb-like consistency.
- Tip out onto a floured work surface and form together with your hands, until you have a nice dough.
- Cover with clingfilm and place into the fridge to rest for 30 minutes.
- After the 30 minutes resting, roll out the pastry on a floured surface until it is fairly thin, you may need to keep reapplying flour to your rolling pin and surface during this process.
- Once you have a thickness you are happy with roll it around your rolling pin and transfer to your greased and floured tart case (I used a drop of olive oil to grease the tins and then sprinkled some flour in and spread around). Press firmly in all the gaps, if it cracks at this stage, do not panic, either press back together or get any trimmings of pastry and fill in the gaps.
- Once you have lined your case/cases, place a sheet of baking parchment in the pastry and fill up with baking beans (you can even use rice if you don’t have any specific baking beans).
- Place into a preheated oven 190°c and bake blind for approximately 20 minutes. If the pastry on the bottom still feels soft after this time then place back in for a further 5 minutes.
- Once cooked, take out of the oven, removing the baking paper and beans and allow to cool on the side.
Chocolate Mousse
Ingredients
- ½ cup of unsweetened cocoa powder or cacao powder
- ¾ cup of chopped cocoa butter or vegan dark chocolate
- 400g tin of full fat coconut milk
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 1 tablespoon maple syrup (or stevia, agave etc basically your preferred sweetener)
- 7 pitted dates
- pinch of salt
Method
- Add The cocoa powder, chocolate, cocoa butter, salt and ¾ of the coconut milk to a pan and put on a low to medium heat.
- Stir until all the ingredients are melted and well combined, then add the rest of the coconut and stir again until completely mixed in.
- Take off the heat, add the maple syrup and vanilla essence.
- Place into a blender, nutribullet etc and add about 4-5 of your dates. Give it a mix until all the dates are combined. Taste to check on sweetness, add the other dates if you want it a little sweeter.
- Transfer to a bowl and leave for 5 hours to set (overnight is preferable but not essential.
Meringue
Ingredients
- 1 x 400g tin of chickpeas (you can use any tin of legumes if you like Haricot Bean, Flageolet beans), drained, this should give you 120-140g liquid
- the same ratio of caster sugar 120-140g depending on what you got from your liquid
- ½ teaspoon Cream of Tartare
Method
- Add the Cream of tartare to the chickpea water and whisk with an electric whisk/food mixer until you have a stiff foam. Make sure all the liquid has been whisked and there is not some hiding in the bottom of the bowl.
- Whilst the mixer is switched on gradually add the sugar a little at a time until all the sugar is incorporated. You should have a very firm mixture that forms stiff peaks and when you turn the bowl upside down it stays put (be careful if attempting this, as if your mixture is not ready you’ll be looking at it on your kitchen floor!).
Now the fun begins
Now that you have all the elements made, it is time to start building that delicious tart.
Method for the tart
- Place all of your pastry cases (or your one big pastry case) on a tray.
- Spoon your chocolate mousse mix straight into the pastry cases, or into a piping bag and pipe the mix into the cases.
Spoon enough in to fill ⅔ of the tart. - Smooth over the chocolate mix with a hot spoon so the mix is level in the tart case. Spoon over a thin layer of your Mindful bites Almond & Maca nut butter.
- You can either pipe your meringue mix on top or go for the rustic look and spoon it on, making rough peaks as you spoon it on.
- Next step is to toast the meringue. My preferred method is to use a blow torch to toast the top of the meringue. If you do not have one….get one….I’m only joking (kind of, you can pick a small one up for around £7 and that is perfectly suitable). If not, you can brown it in a hot oven (180°c), it may take around 10 minutes.
- Top with some toasted flaked Almonds and serve.
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