This rich and creamy vegan chocolate ganache tart looks impressive but takes minimal effort. Perfect for Christmas dinner or festive gatherings, with a smooth cashew base and crisp pastry. A guaranteed crowd-pleaser for chocoholics.
Ingredients
For the Ganache:
- 350 g soaked Cashews (250g before soaking)
- 100 g Coconut Oil
- 50 ml Maple Syrup
- 40 ml Water or Mint Tea to add another dimension
- 150 g Dark Chocolate (54% Cacao Solids with no dairy)
- 1 tsp Vanilla
For the Shortcrust Pastry:
- 270 g White Flour plus some for rolling
- 160 g Coconut Oil
- 3 tbsp Cold Water
- 1 tsp Salt
Some suggestions to garnish:
- Cacao Nibs
- Freeze Dried Raspberries
- Chopped Pistachios
Instructions
To begin
- Preheat the oven to 200°C. To make the shortcrust pastry, add the flour and coconut oil to a food processor and blitz until it looks like breadcrumbs, add water until the dough comes together, scatter some flour on a work surface and knead the dough for a minute, wrap and set aside for 5 minutes in the fridge to harden.
For the shortcrust pastry
- To blind bake the short crust pastry, line a circular pie dish approx. 8 inches or 4 small individual circular tins with baking parchment.
- Flour your work surface and roll out the pastry so it is approx. 1⁄2 cm in thickness, then line the tin/tins loosely and carefully with the rolled dough, so you can press it into the corners, trim the pastry ensuring the pastry comes up and slightly over the edges so it won’t fall back down when it bakes.
- Then cover the dough with baking parchment and weigh it down with dried beans (approx. 100g for large pie dish). Bake at 200°C for 15 mins, take out from the oven, remove the baking parchment and dried beans and set aside to cool and firm up.
Prepare the cashew chocolate ganache filling
- Ideally soak the cashew nuts overnight, if you don’t have time just fill and boil the kettle and soak in boiling water for 30 mins. Drain and rinse them.
- Melt the 150g of chocolate and the 100g of coconut oil until it’s runny. In a food processor add all the ingredients for the ganache and blend on high speed for 5-8 mins until the texture is wonderfully smooth, delicious & has no texture to it.
- Use mint tea or your favorite tea to add another flavor dimension to this dish. To do so just brew the tea in less water than normal so it is more concentrated and leave to cool. Use 40 ml of this instead of the 40 ml of water.
Set your tart
- Once the shortcrust pastry is cooled add the ganache, smooth the surface with a spatula and put in the fridge. For 2 hours to set.
Finishing touches
- Remove from the fridge and decorate with anything you like on top such as cacao nibs, chopped pistachio, raspberry, rose petals, etc.
- Best served in small slices as it's so rich and kept in the fridge so it holds its form.