Everyone who loves chocolate, cheese and fruits! This is a dish for you! Tartlets with blue cheese, pears and chocolate sauce. This crispy home-made pastry filled with blue cheese and covered by delicious chocolate sauce with walnuts and thyme is melting in your mouth. Soft caramelized pears on the top with edible beautiful flowers just finish the festival of incredible smells, unforgettable taste and amazing look. Bon appetite!

Tartlets with blue cheese, pears and chocolate sauce

Ingredients:

(For 8 tartlets)

For base:

• 250 g flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 125 g frozen butter, cut into big cubes
• 125 g organic comte cheese or any other semi-hard cheese, crashed into big pieces
• 60 ml cold water

Chocolate sauce:

• 180 g 70% cooking cocoa bar
• 50 g butter
• 100 ml whipping cream (35% fat)
• 1/4 cup organic sucanat (whole cane sugar)
• A pinch of salt
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 6-7 fresh thyme twigs
• 1 tbsp kahlua licor (optional)
• 1/4 cup crashed walnuts

• 50 g danish blue cheese
• 3 ripe pears
• Edible flowers for decoration
• Brown sugar for sprinkling

Cooking method:

1. For the base mix flour, butter and salt in a blender just few seconds. Then add cheese and water and mix until all ingredients will combine, but still pieces of cheese and butter remain. Put the mass on a big cutting board. By rapid movements gather it into a sausage. Do it fast and don’t overwork the dough. Divide the pastry into 8 equal pieces. Wrap them in plastic foil and put in a fridge for 1 hour.

2. For sauce: crash the chocolate bar on small pieces. Melt it in a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water until completely smooth. Then heat cream, butter, sugar, licor and thyme leaves in a small saucepan until evenly combined. Remove from the heat and stir through the melted chocolate, add crashed walnuts and mix well.

3. Peel the pears, cut them in half, and remove the cores. Then slice each ear half lengthwise into thin slices (2-3 mm each), started at the rounded bottom and cutting almost but not quite all the way through the stem end. The pear slices should remain attached to one another at the stem end.

4. Preheat the oven till 200C. Take out the pastry from the fridge and leave for 15 minutes to rest in a room temperature.

5. On a lightly floured surface, roll each piece of pastry out into a circle as thinly as you can. Line them into the tartlet tins, pressing the pastry into the corners. Trim away the excess and prick the bottom all over with a fork. Line the pastry shell with greaseproof paper and fill with ceramic baking beans. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes, or until the edges are golden. Remove the beans and paper.

6. Spoon 2-3 tbsp of the chocolate sauce over each tartlet shell. Place each pear half cut-slide down into the shels and press them down very lightly into the chocolate sauce, then sprinkle each pear half evenly with the sugar.

7. Place the tartlet tins on the heated baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes until the pears are soft and golden.

8. Leave the tartlets to cool slightly. Once cool enough to handle, carefully unmould them and place the tartlets on individual plates to serve. Decorate with edible flowers and walnuts.