Chocolate with a very fruity twist!

My goodness it has been a while since I last posted something here! The truth is that I have been terribly terribly busy- I don't even have proper time for myself! As a result, it's had a direct effect on my cooking and baking...which has significantly decreased in the past weeks... and I sincerly hope that the cooking/baking curve goes back up in full force soon!

Until that happens, I'm pulling out a fruity little tartlet experimentation I had done a while back. Puff pastry, diced mangoes and chocolate with a passion fruit exotic taste just seems to perfectly coincide with Paris' current grey and dull weather. It's amazing how food can just bring plenty of sunshine into your life!

The tartlets are very easy to make, but what's interesting is the chocolate part. People always say you should use good quality baking chocolate, Valrhona and company... (which I do use) but sometimes you want chocolate with interesting tastes- like passion fruit. So to simplify life, as I was strolling through the chocolate aisles, a sudden idea pops into my head as I stand in front of the Lindt "Sensation Fruit" collection- specifically the Passion fruit flavoured one.

First off, the packaging is divine- joyful, colourful and with elegant golden rims and prints adding a touch of luxury to the supermarket world reflecting a slight "masstige" influence. Secondly, and most importantly, this chocolate tastes very good. So far I had eaten it in generous cubic shapes, but I hadn't used it in baking however. And so all of a sudden I thought to myself why don't I try melting this stuff as it would probably give a beautiful taste to a chocolate based dessert? Which is exactly what I did.

While melting it in a bain-marie, it's tropical fragrance diffused throughout the kitchen corners, providing a very enticing ambiance with chants of island birds and flowers in between my pots and pans. Fortunately besides it's delicious scent, the passion fruit taste remained in melted form. The chocolate melts easily, the only issue is that you really need to be mixing it well as it can easily have a lumpy texture. I melted the chocolate with cream like when making ganache. It became the base of the tart, which was then topped off with mango and mint leaves. A delight that's easy to make and can be ready in minutes!

Recipe for mango-chocolate-passion fruit tartlets:

Ingredients:

• Puff pastry or short cut pastry (maybe the latter is more advisable!)
• Liquid cream 1 unit
• Passion Fruit flavoured chocolate 2 units (always double the Q of liquid cream)
• Mangoes, diced
• Mint leaves

How to make it:

• Bake the pastry in small tartlet moulds until golden and well cooked. When ready, take out of oven and let cool
• Prepare the ganache by heating the liquid cream of medium-high heat. Do not let it boil!
• Then turn off heat and add the chocolate. Mix continuously until there are no lumps. Set aside for a while until it becomes less "liquidy".
• Pour the ganache into the base of the tartlets and top off with diced mangoes and decorate with mint leaves.