BWJ -- Chocolate Truffle Tarts

Our second entry for Baking With Julia: Chocolate Truffle Tartlets. Yum. You can find the recipe on pages 382-383 of the book or you can check out our hosts' blogs: Spike, Jaime, Jessica and Steph. (Apologies to Steph of "A Whisk and a Spoon" -- the link doesn't seem to copy to my blog.)

There are two recipes, both by David Ogonowski. First you make the dough for the tarts. Reading through the recipe, I had a serious case of food-processor envy. To say this is a "hands on" recipe is putting it mildly and I had my doubts. I usually avoid making pie crusts with butter for the very reason that it seems that the butter and flour will never reach the size of small peas. Eventually using fingertips, a dough scraper, two butter knives and rubbing the dough between both palms, I got the butter mixed in with the other ingredients.   After chilling it, it rolled out like a charm.
In the end however, the dough turned out to be a bit dry and they shrunk a bit in the tartlet pan. I'm not exactly sure where I went wrong. Maybe the oven temperature was too high, maybe I left them in too long.

The filling came out like a dream; very rich and full of chocolate flavor. Although, I must invest in a metal bowl for melting the chocolate. I had to balance a small pan on top of a larger pan instead. Waiting for the chocolate to genly melt, I couldn't take my hand off the pan lest it fall.
I didn't use biscotti, but the tarts still had a nice crunch from the chocolate bits. This is just about the fanciest desert I have ever made and it was a perfect ending for our Valentine's Day dinner.