Truffle Tarts with Raspberry

Hello Sprinkle Lovers!! We have quite a treat for you.  It seems that we have a birthday to celebrate every week, but I guess that’s what happens on a team of 40 girls.  Anyhow, happy 21^st Felice, we love you.  For this very special event we ventured to make our most intricate dessert yet.  ­­­­­Truffle Tarts with Raspberry, let me just tell you, these are DELICIOUS!  This beauty is a bit time consuming so leave yourself a while, or do what we did and make them the night before you need them.  Ariel found this recipe on www.foodnetwork.com and I quickly approved it as the treat of the night.  Make the truffle mixture first, seeing as it must sit for an hour before you can add them to the Oreo crust.

Dark Chocolate Truffles:

Ingredients

·         1/2 cup heavy cream

·         8 ounces good-quality (70 percent) bittersweet chocolate, chopped

·         1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

·         1 cup cocoa powder, for dusting

Directions

In a saucepan, bring the cream just to a simmer over low heat. Pour the cream over the chocolate in a bowl and let stand about 10 minutes to melt the chocolate. Add the vanilla and stir until smooth. Set aside to cool for 1 hour at room temperature.  Make the Oreo crust at this time.

Oreo Crust

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups fine chocolate wafer crumbs (from Oreo cookies or chocolate wafers)
• 6 tablespoons melted butter
• 6 fresh raspberries, plus extra for serving

Directions

Use a fork to mix together the chocolate wafer crumbs and butter. Spray the cups of a 6-muffin tin with a vegetable spray. Line the cups with strips of parchment or waxed paper, cut so that they are as wide as the diameter of each cup and long enough to overhang the sides (you'll need this overhang to remove the tarts). Use the bottom of a small glass to press the crumbs over the bottom and sides of the muffin cups, building the sides up to only about 1 1/2 inches. Place a raspberry in the center of each crust.

At this time you should beat the chocolate at medium speed until it gets thick and light colored. With a pastry bag or small plastic bag with the corner snipped off, fill the tarts with the truffle mixture. Smooth the tops and refrigerate until set, about 2 hours.

Instead of using parchment paper, we used the paper cupcake liners.  When you remove the liners it leaves a bumpy print on the crust which looks really cute.  Also, instead of making all of the tarts in a regular sized cupcake pan, we made several in the mini pan and cup the raspberries for the middle in half.  The tarts are very delicious, but extremely rich, so we would recommend making all of them in the mini sized pan.  We also chose not to smooth the top of the truffle before refrigerating it because we liked the way the swirled top looked.  Seriously though, you have to make these because I really cannot stress enough how good they are!!!