December Cooking Club: Coconut Tarts with Chocolate and Coconut Cream

Yield:  6

INGREDIENTS:

For the Coconut Tart Shells:

• 2 x egg whites
• 2 cups of shredded coconut

For the Chocolate and Coconut Cream:

• 1/2 cup of coconut milk
• 8 oz of bittersweet chocolate, chopped

 
DIRECTIONS:

For the Coconut Tart Shells:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Whisk egg whites lightly and stir in coconut.
3. Spray a muffin tin with non-stick cooking spray and press a large spoonful of coconut mixture into each cup, pushing it evenly into the bottom and up the sides.
4. Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until golden brown. Let cool in muffin pan.

For the Chocolate and Coconut Cream:

1. Heat coconut milk.
2. Place chocolate into a bowl and pour hot milk over it. Stir until chocolate melts and mixture becomes satiny-smooth.
3. Pour chocolate mixture into cooled coconut shell.
4. Serve warm or cold and enjoy!

This month’s challenge was unique.  Food Network posted 12 different recipes at the beginning of December and let Cooking Club participants choose the recipe of their heart’s desire.  I choose these tarts by Michael Smith because I think making tarts shells out of coconut is cool (albeit a bit messy) and chocolate and I are dear friends.

The recipe itself as you can see it very simple and straightforward.  I did have a bit of trouble getting the shells to come out of the muffin tin but running a knife around the edge of tart solved that problem.  I had enough chocolate for the 6 coconut tarts I made plus 3 more that I filled into regular tart shells that I had on hand.  This suited my husband perfectly as he is not a coconut fan.  Personally I think the sweetness of the coconut provides and nice foil to the bittersweet chocolate but I like things sweeter than he does, though he did admit a dollop of whipped cream on top wouldn’t have hurt anyone either.  In any case, the tarts were good but not “blow me away” kind of good.

I wasn’t sure how to store these so I refrigerated them.  Not such a hot idea.  The generous dollop of chocolate that I put into each tart became quite hard and ruined the effect so that we didn’t even finish eating these.  Much better served warm giving the chocolate a great “feel” in one’s mouth.

I give this recipe 7.5  chips out of a bag of 10.