Chocolate Lavender Tartlets with Lemon Cardamom Crust

Whoa, you guys. That is a long title. And at first I was leery of so many flavors -- Chocolate AND Lemon...Lavender AND Cardamom (no one can live at that speed!) -- but after spending the money on high-quality chocolate, I felt financially committed to the project. This afternoon I tried it out, and it was, as they say in the movies, love at first taste. (PS - Happy Oscar Night!)

This recipe comes directly from Emily Hilliard's beyond-awesome pie blog, Nothing-in-the-House (link to the right). The specific recipe is here, and I highly recommend spending some quality time exploring her other posts. They are all delicious.

So, here is the story of my afternoon baking adventure:

First, the supplies.

These items will become the crust. When they were finished, the lemon flavor was much stronger than the cardamom, probably due to the lemon zest/lemon juice combo. And yes, that is a glorious dishful of butter going into these suckers, because it's the Oscars and you deserve it.

And these will become a chocolate-lavender ganache. Only I forgot to set out the butter and heavy cream for the picture, so please use your imagination. More importantly, you may be looking at those white dishes and thinking to yourself, "Why, those don't look like jam jars. This blog is a lie!" But it's okay. First of all, the 4-ounce thing is more of a loose motif, not a strict rule. Also, (and those of you who know how type-A I can be will be able to imagine how pleased I was when...) I did a volume comparison between the jam jars and these mini-tart dishes, and they're the same volume...almost. So everything is fine.

After combining and processing the crust ingredients, I wrapped up the dough ball and let it chill for about an hour. I've only had my food processor for a year or so, and, frankly, it's such a pain to clean I hardly every use it. Because of this, I'm still a little intimidated by how big and loud and strong it is. I hope to get more comfortable wielding its power in the future. Stay tuned for updates on that front.

 The dough was really easy to work with after it was chilled. I managed to fill five of my 4'' mini-tart dishes rather than one regular 9'' tart pan (Sidebar: thank your high school math teachers, kids. You will use that formula for area of a circle or volume of a cylinder later in life). Can you see that buttery sheen? Mmhmm. Yeah, you can. That's how you know this is going to be delicious.

A quarter cup of lavender buds feels like a lot when you're measuring it out, but in the pan this seems like a reasonable amount. In this picture the lavender/cream mixture is all warmed up and ready to steep for about 10 minutes.

Draining the lavender-infused cream to start the ganache-making process. In that bowl, under the cream is a pile of really high-quality chocolate. And magic is about to happen.

Same bowl, same ingredients, five minutes later: after setting and whisking, our chocolate lavender ganache is ready. The citrus tones in the lavender went really well with the lemon and cardamom in the crust. I'm so glad there are culinary geniuses out there to think of flavor combinations I'd never dream of.

Those buttery, lemony, cardamom...y tart crusts are out of the oven and ready for their filling. (Confession: I actually made six, but the last one was so thin that it broke apart while it cooled and I ate it like a cookie...because I needed strength to keep baking and documenting the rest of the recipe, of course; I ate it for you, you guys.)

Almost done! Two years from now, somebody remind me to make Olympic-ring-themed tarts to celebrate the games in Rio. I feel like this is such an unfortunate missed opportunity with the Sochi games just closing last week. Sigh.

Okay, here's the real finished product. Chocolate Lavender Tartlets with Lemon Cardamom Crust, dusted with coarse salt, fine sugar, and lavender buds. These desserts are a surprising balance of refinement and indulgence, delicacy and richness, yin and yang. And I'm having one for dinner.