Chocolate Peanut Butter Tart

Everyone should have leftover tart shells in the freezer. They're indispensable. I had the idea of trying to make Peanut Butter Cup tarts with the chocolate tart shells we had in the freezer. I wanted them to taste like Reese's Peanut Butter cups, so I tried to find out how to make regular peanut butter taste like the filling of a peanut butter cup. Most of the recipes I found called for a mixture of peanut butter and powdered sugar, and sometimes butter. Adding powdered sugar to the peanut butter makes it dry but I wanted something more like a sauce. (I wanted the taste of a Reese's cup, not the texture.)

I tried melting sugar (granulated, not powdered) with peanut butter and butter over low heat, then adding some heavy cream to thin it out. The result was very good but had a cooked or roasted flavor that was a bit distracting from the peanut butter-ness -- not bad, just distracting. In addition to this distracting flavor element, I had to add more cream than I would have liked to get the sauce thin enough. I briefly toyed with the idea of a mixture of peanut butter and sweetened condensed milk, but the test batch I made tasted too much like the condensed milk. I finally hit upon the perfect peanut butter sauce by modifying my first attempt. By mixing the peanut butter into a slurry of cream, butter, and dissolved sugar, (and not cooking it any more) I was able to get sweet peanut buttery sauce I desired without the roasted flavor of cooked peanuts.

Peanut butter sauce done, I set out to plan the rest of the tart. Originally I was thinking of a layer of peanut butter sauce topped by a thin shell of chocolate. Somehow, I ended up with a layer of peanut butter whipped cream on top instead of the chocolate. (Peanut butter whipped cream being a mixture of the peanut butter sauce and regular whipped cream.) This is quite good, but, having since made the tart again, I can say the the two options put together is even better. So the final layout is thus: chocolate tart shell, layer of sweet peanut butter sauce, layer of peanut butter whipped cream, layer of chocolate ganache. The verdict: delicious.

Peanut Butter Sauce

1 tbs unsalted butter
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup peanut butter

Combine sugar, butter and cream in a small saucepan over gentle heat. Stir frequently until sugar is dissolved and mixture is homogenized, then remove from heat. Stir in peanut butter and let cool. If you mix the peanut butter in with the other ingredients over the heat and let them cook a bit longer, you will get a sauce that has a cooked peanut taste - something like the flavor of honey roasted peanuts.