Chocolate Ganache Tartlets

I had every intention of using my piping bag.  Really, I did.  But Jim was out of town, and I had to take my own pictures, and I suddenly thought, why don't I just try to make these as easy as possible.  And I must say, if you don't bother with the piping, they're extremely easy and almost as cute.

It's another recipe where you don't have to buy anything fancy, and you're likely to have everything at home that you need.  You do clarify the butter--and I didn't cheat here--but I have a hunch that it wouldn't be a total disaster if you just melted it.

The food processor gives you two balls of buttery, tactilely lovely dough.

Which you then turn into disks of dough and (of course) refrigerate them for a while.  No need to worry about how long they're refrigerated.

I'm pretty sure that it was sometime when I was shaping little balls of dough to fit the fluted indentations that the thought actually came to me about not piping the chocolate.  To be honest, I got a little weary of trying to shape these nicely and not poking them with my fingernail or letting the dough get so thin that the mini brioche pan showed through.

Then I had to dig up the equivalent of a long, thin sewing needle.  This is not a craftsy house!  No sewing is done in this house.  I think the long, thin thing I found is supposed to be used for trussing a bird.  Not a lot of trussing gets done in this house either.  I read someplace that there's really no need to bother, and I took that piece of advice to heart.  As it turned out, I barely had to use the needle because the tartlet shells popped right out of the pan.

Some of the tartlet shells got toasty brown, but most remained uncolored.

Here's the part where it gets super easy.  You make the ganache, and you have chunks of Scharffen Berger chocolate, so you don't have to chop it.  You just mix the milk, chocolate, and butter together, heat it all in the microwave, and strain it into a measuring cup.  Then you immediately pour the ganache into the tartlet shells.  No need to wait for it to cool, no need to get your piping equipment from the basement, no need to struggle with the tip.  It pours so smoothly, and looks smooth and shiny.

Do you think anyone is going to look at these babies and say, yuck, they're not even piped?  Even though I know that you know that's a rhetorical question, I'll tell you anyway that the answer is no.  And there were plenty left over when Jim came home.  These luscious little chocolate treats are gone in two bites (3 bites for JJ and 1 bite for Jim), and are quite effective at satisfying your chocolate craving, although Jim thinks that 3 are better than 1.

If you were to put a dab of whipped cream on top of the chocolate, that would be a good idea, but, again, no one will complain if you hand them something that's noticeably deep, rich, chocolate.  I'm going to make these again.  I might even pipe the chocolate the next time, but I wouldn't bet on it.