Amazing French Chocolate Orange Tartlets

These Chocolate Orange Tartlets are the perfect dessert if you have some leftover oranges and if you’re looking for a great-looking and amazing-tasting bite-size dessert that impresses! These French tartlets, made out of a yummy chocolate-orange combination, homemade shortcrust pastry, orange curd filling and chocolate ganache are an amazing little dessert to bring with you to the next dinner party. If you’re a fan of Tart’s, also check out my fresh Lemony Easter Tart.

There surely are desserts that are quicker to make than these French tartlets, but don’t shy the effort, the result definitely will blow you away.

In this recipe, I’m gonna cover how to make these little fresh French chocolate orange tartlets from start to finish.

Chocolate Orange Tartlets – Table of contents

Ingredients you need for my French Orange Tartlets

These delicious orange chocolate tartlets are generally made out of the following three main components. In this recipe, you learn how to make all of them at home and which ingredients you need for them.

Tartlet Shells made out of French Shortcrust Pastry (Pâte Sablée)

Pâte Sablée in French translates to “sandy dough” and is a French shortcrust pastry. This kind of sweet, crumbly, and flaky tart dough can be made by using a food processor or by hand by rubbing the cold butter into the flour until you get a crumbly consistency. To make Pâte Sablée at home, you need the following ingredients:

• White flour (all-purpose flour)
• Eggs
• Powdered Sugar
• Orange Zest
• Table Salt
• Butter (cold or frozen cubes)

Homemade Orange Curd

Orange Curd is a sweet and creamy spread, also known as “Orange Butter”, which can be eaten and enjoyed on its own and is used in different kinds of desserts or tarts like this one. To make homemade orange curd, you’ll need the following ingredients:

• Fresh Orange Juice (normal oranges or even blood oranges)
• Household Sugar
• Butter
• Eggs
• Corn Starch
• Orange Zest

Chocolate Ganache (chocolate filling)

Chocolate Ganache is a rich chocolate concoction and 1:1 mixture of chocolate and hot cream. While super easy to make, chocolate ganache is an ingredient used in many chocolate desserts, used as a frosting on cakes and tarts, dip, sauce, or even a filling used for truffles. As mentioned above, you only need two main ingredients to make a quick and easy but delicious chocolate ganache at home:

• Dark chocolate chips or dark cooking chocolate (or any good quality milk chocolate or even white chocolate)
• Thickened Cream / Heavy Cream / double cream

How to make Chocolate Orange Tartlets – Step by Step

Below you will find out how to make this chocolate orange tart step by step, divided into the three main components, the tartlet shells, orange curd, and chocolate ganache.

Making these lovely French tartlets at home could seem a bit overwhelming when making the first time, but are rather easy to make if you have a little patience with kneading the dough or waiting to cool down the dough and tartlets in the fridge several times. But one is for sure, the effort will definitely be worth it and show off an amazing taste and look.

If you would rather watch the recipe instead of reading it, you can jump to my Video Recipe below.

Step 1: Making the Shortcrust Pastry Tartlet Shells

Preparing the Tart dough

With a metal strainer, sieve the flour and powdered sugar into a large bowl. Add the salt and mix everything together. Now add the cold or frozen cubes of butter and with your hands (or using a food processor) start to massage the butter until you get a crumbly and flaky dough.

Whisk the egg in a cup and add it, as well as the orange zest, to the dough. With a fork, mix them into the flaky dough. Put the pastry dough onto the kitchen countertop and knead together until you get a smooth and even ball of dough.

Put the dough ball between two large sheets of parchment paper and roll out the dough about 3-4mm thick using a rolling pin. Put the flat dish of dough into the fridge for 1 hour or longer.

Preparing the Tartlet Shells

Grab your Muffin / Tart pan and grease it with some melted butter. With a cookie cutter, cut out round disks from the hard and cold sheet of dough. Be sure to cut out at minimum about the diameter of the opening of the tartlet pan.

Gently press the round disks into the tart tins and try to remove any air bubbles. Try to work quickly but safely here as the dough will become warmer and brittle.

Prick the tart base several times with a fork.

Baking the Tartlet Shells

Cut out some larger pieces of parchment paper and push them onto the tartlet shells. Fill in some baking weights or you can also use dry rice, beans etc.

In the first step, you’ll be blind baking the shells for 15 minutes at around 170°C / 340°F in the oven. Take the shells out of the oven again, remove the baking weights, and in a second step, bake the shells on their own again for another 15 minutes until golden.

Take the shells out of the tart pan and put them on a cooling rack to completely cool down.

Step 2: Making Orange Curd

Using a citrus juicer, extract the fresh juice of the oranges. Measure the juice with a kitchen scale so you get the right amount of juice regarding the recipe and the amount of tartlets you make.

Separate the egg yolks and put them, together with the orange juice, household sugar, corn starch, and orange zest into a small saucepan. Set the stove to low heat and start mixing together the ingredients. Keep whisking until the liquid starts to thicken.

Then add the cold cubes of butter and whisk well until you get a smooth orange curd. Fill the cold tartlet shells halfway with the freshly made orange curd. Put the Shells back into the fridge for about 1 hour or longer.

Step 3: Making Chocolate Filling

Now it’s time to make the last step of the chocolate orange tartlets, the chocolate ganache.

To do so, finely chop the dark cooking chocolate and put the chopped chocolate into a heatproof bowl. Heat up the heavy cream in a small saucepan, pour half of it over the chocolate, and let it sit for about 3-5 minutes. Mix together with a soft spatula and then add the second half of the hot cream. Mix together as well and top up the tartlets with the hot chocolate ganache.

Put the Tartlets back into the fridge for 30-60 minutes or until the ganache gets hard.

Now comes the fun part of decorating the top of the tart and being creative with some different toppings as you like them. In my recipe, I used some orange zest, chocolate splitters, powdered sugar, and fresh orange slices. But for sure you can use anything you like.

Watch how to make Chocolate Orange Tartlets – Video Recipe

Frequently Asked Questions for Orange Chocolate Tartlets

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