The cocoa tartlets with mandarin jam are not only delicious and fragrant but also easy to prepare. They consist of cocoa shortcrust pastry filled with exquisite jam. We can customize our tartlets with everything we like; we can fill them with custard, Nutella, or various jams. They will be enjoyed by both adults and children. If you like mandarins, then don’t miss this delicious jam. Try making it; it’s very easy. Here is the procedure
We can also make a single tart, using a tart pan with a diameter of 11 inches. The baking time will be about 30 minutes.
- Portions: 4
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Autumn, Winter
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2/3 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup cold butter, diced
- 1/2 tsp fine salt
- 2 medium whole eggs
- 1 egg yolk
- to taste grated orange zest (finely)
- 12 oz Mandarin Jam
Tools
- 4 Tartlet Molds
Steps
To make the tartlets, I used molds with a diameter of 4 inches.
Let’s prepare the cocoa shortcrust pastry.
Refrigerate the mixing bowl (or the food processor bowl with any blades) for 30 minutes.
Dice the butter and return it to the fridge for another 30 minutes.
Sift the flour and cocoa well, then add the sugar, fine salt, and very cold butter into the chilled bowl and rub with your fingertips until you have a crumbly mixture (do this quickly to avoid overheating the butter). It’s okay if there are still visible pieces of butter.
If using a food processor, it’s best to use the pulse function, a few seconds at a time, to coarsely mix the butter with the dry ingredients.
At this point, add the whole eggs first and mix quickly to prevent the dough from getting too warm from the heat of your hands or the blades.
Only if the dough still appears too loose, unable to absorb all the flour, add the yolk. This precaution is necessary because eggs never have the same weight and flours never absorb the same amount of liquids.
When you’ve obtained a firm and compact dough, flatten it with a rolling pin, shape it into a rectangle, and place it in the lowest part of the fridge, well covered with plastic wrap or parchment paper.
Butter and flour 4 molds (or line them with parchment paper).
After an hour, preheat the oven to 356°F (180°C) and take the dough out of the fridge.
Place it on a sheet of parchment paper, lightly flour it, and roll it out with a rolling pin to a thickness of about 1/5 inch.
Using the tartlet molds, cut out discs of pastry to line the molds
Fill them with 2 or 3 generous teaspoons of jam.
After filling all the tartlets, cut thin and narrow strips of pastry with a fluted pastry cutter and decorate your desserts (while forming and filling the tartlets, keep the leftover pastry scraps in the fridge; you can use them to make additional tartlets or decorative strips).
Bake in the middle of the oven for about 20 minutes (baking times are based on my gas oven, static with bottom heat only).
Remove from the oven, let the cocoa tartlets with mandarin jam cool thoroughly before cutting or serving.
Bon appetit
