I almost never follow a recipe exactly as it is written. There are several reasons for this. I'm a picky pain in the ass for one, which means that many recipes have ingredients in them that I don't like. Sometimes I think I the recipe will be better if I tweak it. And sometimes I just like to experiment. Anyway, I've had a bunch of conversations where I've talked to people about how you don't have to follow the recipes exactly, and I thought I'd give an example. I made these Chocolate Caramel Tartlets for my mom's birthday and I changed the recipe around a little here and there.
The original recipe, which I got from Martha Stewart's 2009 Holiday Sweets magazine:
For the tart shells
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
½ cup sugar
¾ teaspoon fleur de sel
½ cup (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
For the filling:
1 cup sugar
½ cup water
½ cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons ruby or tawny port
2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 ounce bittersweet chocolate (preferably 70% cacao), finely chopped
1 cup roasted Marcona almonds (4 ounces; or roasted salted blanched almonds) finely chopped
Fleur de sel for sprinkling
1. Make tart shells: In a food processor, pulse flour, cocoa, sugar until combined. Add butter; pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal. With machine running, add eggs through the feed tube, process just until dough comes together. Turn out dough onto a work surface; shape into a disk. Wrap in plastic. Chill 30 minutes, or up to overnight.
2. On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to about 1/8 inch thick. Using a 3 inch cookie cutter, cut 10 rounds from the dough. Transfer remaining dough to a flour dusted baking sheet, chill while you work with the tartlets.
3. Fit dough rounds into ten round tartlet pans each 2 ¼ in diameter. Trim edges of dough flush with rims. Chill shells 30 minutes.
4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prick bottoms of dough all over with a fork. Bake until firm, about 12 minutes. Transfer pans to a wire rack to cool completely before unmolding.
5. Working in batches of ten and using remaining dough (reroll the scraps) repeat steps 2, 3 and 4 until you have 40 shells in all (or until you run out of dough).
Caramel Filling:
6. Make caramel filling: Heat sugar and the water in a small saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Continue to cook, without stirring until syrup comes to a boil, occasionally washing down sided of pan with a wet pastry brush to prevent crystals from forming. Let boil, swirling pan to color evenly, until syrup is dark amber. Remove from heat.
7. Carefully stir in cream and port (mixture will spatter). Add butter and chocolate; stir until melted and the mixture is smooth. Let cool until slightly thickened but still pourable, about 20 minutes.
8. Sprinkle about 1 teaspoon chopped almonds over the bottom of each tart shell. Spoon the caramel mixture into shells, filling almost to the top. Sprinkle with remaining almonds and fleur de sel. Chill until ready to serve, up to 3 hours.
What I did:
For the tart shells, the only change I made was to use Maldon salt for the fleur de sel, which Martha suggests as an appropriate alternative. You can use any sea salt, but a nice flaky one will help.
What I wouldn't change: Sometimes, I deliberately use salted butter when the recipe calls for unsalted, (like with chocolate chip cookies) but I think it would be overkill here.
I also did not have the right size tartlet pans. Mine are 3 and 7/8ths inches, so they made about 20 tartlets. The cooking time was essentially the same, because it is based on the thickness of the dough, not the size of the rounds.
It helps to chill the tarts in their pans on a cookie sheet before you bake them, but you don't have to be quite as thorough about the chilling as Martha is.
I made a few changes to the filling, listed in bold
1 cup sugar
½ cup water
½ cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons ruby or tawny port (what am I, an 18th century ship captain? I have no port. Instead, I substituted 2 tablespoons vanilla extract) 2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 ounce bittersweet chocolate (preferably 70% cacao), finely chopped (I went with semisweet chocolate)
1 cup roasted Marcona almonds (4 ounces; or roasted salted blanched almonds) finely chopped (I couldn't find Marcona almonds, so I bought some blanched slivered almonds, roasted them in my oven and then tossed them with a little of the Maldon salt, and then chopped them).
I get anxious about overcooking the caramel, so I used a candy thermometer to gauge when I thought the caramel was done, rather than going by color alone. I think 320 degrees is about the right temperature.
To toast the almonds, place them on an ungreased baking sheet and toast them at 350 degrees for about 5 minutes. Open the oven and shake the pan gently. Put back in the oven for another 3 to 5 minutes, but don't let them get too brown. Remove from oven, allow to cool and then chop into smaller pieces.
So there you can see what I changed and what I didn't. They weren't dramatic, but they were changes. And I assure you, the tarts were absolutely delicious.
