Little hazelnut tartlets with caramel fudge icing

Bad hair days. Those merciless, cruel days when you look in the mirror and all you see is a member of some band from the 80s.
We can have bad hair days when it comes to cooking, can’t we? This recipe qualifies as one.

In some pans, the batter overflew and the ones that didn’t delivered funny-looking tartlets. To make me feel even worse, the icing wasn’t spoonable as the one on the original recipe.

Before you start thinking “what the heck is she posting this for?” and my friend gets mad at me again, let me tell you that these tartlets were delicious. Delicious. Worth all the hair I pulled out while they were in the oven. :)

I’m completely hooked on the Australian Gourmet Traveller’s website, so get ready to see lots of their recipes around here.

Little hazelnut tartlets with caramel fudge icing
from Australian Gourmet Traveller

100g cold butter, coarsely chopped
1 vanilla bean, scraped seeds only
3 egg whites
180g pure icing sugar, sieved
70g hazelnut meal
50g plain flour
finely grated zest of 1 orange
crème fraîche, to serve

Caramel fudge icing:
330g light brown sugar
100ml pouring cream
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
20g butter, room temperature

Butter and flour 4 12cm-diameter fluted tart pans*; set aside.

Cook butter and vanilla seeds in a small saucepan over medium-high heat until dark nut brown in color (4-5 minutes), then set aside until completely cool.

Preheat oven to 170ºC/338ºF. Using an electric mixer, whisk egg whites until soft peaks form, gradually add icing sugar, whisking continuously until thick and glossy. Fold in hazelnut meal, flour and orange rind, then cooled butter. Divide among the prepared pans and bake until golden (20-25 minutes). Stand for 5 minutes, then remove from moulds and cool on a wire rack.

For caramel fudge icing, combine ingredients in a saucepan and stir over medium-high heat until butter melts and sugar dissolves (2-3 minutes). Bring to the boil and cook until mixture reaches 114ºC/237ºF on a candy thermometer (4-5 minutes).Transfer to an electric mixer, add 80ml of hot water and whisk until glossy. Working quickly, spoon onto tarts and stand until set. Serve with crème fraîche – I served it with whipped cream.

* I used 8.5cm pans and ended up with 8 tarts

Serves 4