BAKED Sunday Mornings: Almond Joy Tart

Wow, where have I been? I can't believe I haven't baked in so long- I baked so much for Christmas and there were so many leftover cookies that I was trying to eat instead of baking something new. I also ran out of butter but finally got to the supermarket yesterday. I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! Happy New Year 2011 too : ). I know that 2011 will be an awesome year and one of my goals is to bake and cook more and to continue to blog what happens in my kitchen!

I wasn't sure if I was going to find the time to bake this almond joy tart, but boy am I glad I made the time! I have always loved the almond joy candy bars. This tart tastes divine and really reminds me of the candy bar. Once again, I halved the recipe and since I didn't have any mini tart pans, I made a free-form tart on a cookie sheet. As usual, my presentation needs to be worked on, as you can see from the pictures, but I kind of like the rustic look. I think my chocolate glaze didn't cover as well because there was so much coconut cream filling on the tart. For this tart, I followed the recipe pretty closely. I used almonds for the tart crust and for on top of the tart that were already roasted and that were maple coconut glazed. I used Malibu coconut flavored rum for a little extra coconut flavor. I also used only milk chocolate because I didn't have any dark chocolate and milk chocolate is my favorite anyway. I used unsweetened shredded coconut that I found at Whole Foods and I'm really glad I used that (like the recipe called for) and not the easier to find sweetened shredded coconut because I think that would have made it too sweet and the unsweetened coconut really reminds me of what is in an almond joy candy bar.

I was surprised at how easy this tart was to make, since it included several steps. You do have to be prepared in advance to make this, because the tart dough and the white chocolate mixture require substantial chilling time. I made the tart dough and the white chocolate mixture yesterday and refrigerated them until this morning. The tart dough began to crumble a little when I was rolling it out, but I just gathered it together in a ball again, re-floured and rolled it out and it came out perfect.

My free-form tart, in the oven.

The white chocolate coconut cream

Milk chocolate glaze

The almonds I used for the tart dough

Delicious!

Be sure to head over to Baked Sunday Mornings for the recipe and to see what the other members thought of this recipe!