Chocolate Passionfruit Tart

With only a little hinting, younger niece chose a 'clipping' (printouts of web pages these days, mostly) from my recipes-to-try file for her birthday celebration: Chocolate Passionfruit Tarts. I was seduced by the beautiful photographs and by the flavor of passionfruit, discovered first by making Rose's White Gold Pasison Genoise. That was for younger niece's birthday last year, come to think of it.


Recipe description in pictures:


Make a chocolate pate sucre crust and pre-bake. Brush with egg-white glaze to seal.




Spread a thin layer of butter-enriched ganache in crusts.



Make a passionfruit mousse, let it cool, and fill tarts with it.




Notes: we all liked the flavors, but had various comments to try to improve it overall. First on the cooking side: I made a half recipe of the crust and ganache, but decided to make a full recipe of the mousse to use up more of the package of passionfruit puree. However, when I'd filled my tarts I had about an ounce of mousse left. Maybe my tart proportions made the volume difference (the recipe doesn't give a suggested tart size), but just be warned. I got 6 4-1/2" x 3/4" tartlets, one 3" or so, and 2 baby 2" tartlet from the crust scraps.

The biggest tartlets were too large for our preferred dessert serving size: on a repeat I'd go for the 3 or 3-1/2" size. The chocolate crust was difficult to work with even rolling it between 2 pieces of parchment--it's got a very high butter content and went from "too rigid to be worked" to "about to melt" in what seemed like seconds, needing frequent trips back to the fridge to chill. Younger niece wanted a higher ratio of ganache to mousse, and I think I agree with her. I suggested that we do a crustless version, even, with maybe a 1:2 ganache:mousse blend and maybe a dab of whipped cream on top. My brother would like a different crust, though, to keep the crunch but do better than the flavor in this one. Maybe a shortbread crust, or plain pate sucree. (I'm no great shakes at pate sucree or any pie crust...might improve by changing crusts, might not...)

Last note of possible improvement is that the passionfuit mousse is quite stiff. The recipe describes it as "passionfruit puree, sugar, butter, eggs, and a smidge of gelatin", but that smidge is really 3 teaspoons. I'll cut that back to 2 next time, trying for a softer and less jello-like texture.

Lots of critical comments above, but don't be turned off. These tarts are a really nice flavor combination, and are beautiful to boot.