Dark Chocolate and Almond Tart

My dad's turning 50 years old tomorrow! Since I can't bake then, I figured I'd give him his birthday treat tonight!


I decided to make him a tart, but not those normal tarts I make since he's turning the big 5-0 tomorrow. It has to be more special. So the first special component: almond pastry. It's a pate sablee crust, but with ground almonds in it!:D

If I know my dad, it's that he loves two things: potatoes and dark chocolates. Since I haven't tried any dessert with potatoes in them, I figured I'd stick with the dark chocolates. You don't experiment with a man's 50th birthday treat, after all.:P

So what better way to enjoy dark chocolate than to turn it into a rich and indulging tart! I used Callebaut dark chocolate chips for the ganache. In retrospect, I think infusing it with Amaretto to give an almond taste to it would be awesome. But I didn't have any anyway haha. Callebaut's special enough.:P

After I poured the ganache into the tart shell, I thought it looked a little bare. So I got a few almonds and tried to caramelize them.

Now, it's my first attempt at caramelizing nuts and I think the smoke in the entire kitchen gave that away. Anyway, I'm just making an excuse because the almonds didn't turn out very pretty; I ended up taking them off and eating them haha. I'll just try to do it again later before he comes home. The whole thing has to be as special as the man who'll receive it after all.;)

Happy 50th birthday, dad!:*