chocolate dulce de leche tart

As previously mentioned, we're heading to San Juan Bautista for New Year's Eve this year. Our friends Jared and Amy graciously offered to host a few of us at their home for a relaxed celebration. I volunteered to bring dessert and set out to find something suitable for the occasion

One of my favorite cookbooks from this past year was David Lebovitz's My Paris Kitchen. I decided to make his chocolate dulce de leche tart.

The crust was a disaster challenging. After creaming the butter and sugar together and adding the requisite egg yolk, I stirred in the cocoa-flour mixture and was rewarded with a bowl full of what looked like dark sand. There was no chance that this would come together as any sort of crust. So I used a recipe from Saveur, creamed a bit more butter, added a touch more flour and another egg yolk and turned it into a different recipe for a chocolate pie crust, and voila - dough fit to be pressed into a tart pan.

The rest of the recipe came together easily enough - the dulce de leche, the chocolate custard, the sprinkling of sea salt on the top - and baked into something we'll be eating after dinner tonight with a dollop of whipped cream. I'll check in to let you know whether it's a keeper or not. In the meanwhile, happy New Year's Eve - I hope everyone has something planned for this evening that he/she is looking forward to. See you in the new year.