NEW YEARS EVE: Chocolate Caviar Tart Or Tartlet

December 26, 2013 at 8:41 am · Filed under Cookies-Cake-Pastry, New Year's Eve, Recipes

Dominique Ansel, the acclaimed pastry chef who invented the Cronut, has an entire store full of delicious things to eat.

For New Year’s Eve, anniversaries and other special occasions, we like his chocolate caviar tartlet*. He fills a chocolate tart crust with caramel coffee cream and tops it with chocolate caviar pearls and gold leaf.

You can use any chocolate tart recipe you like. Here’s a delicious coffee-chocolate tart recipe is from pastry chef Pichet Ong.

WHAT IS CHOCOLATE CAVIAR?

Chocolate caviar comprises small beads of chocolate that are formed to look like real caviar beads (which are also called caviar pearls—check out our Caviar Glossary). They provide a visual delight, toothsome texture and of course, intense bites of chocolate.

Caramel chocolate “caviar” tartlet with edible gold foil. Photo courtesy Dominique Ansel.

Chocolate caviar is typically made from cocoa powder, sugar syrup, water and alginate to hold it together.

Here’s the rub: Buying chocolate caviar in small quantities is costly. It’s sold as a gourmet novelty gift.

But if you can see your way to buying seven pounds of it—the commercial size from top chocolate manufacturer Callebaut—for $56, it’s an affordable $8 a pound, and leaves you with a lot of caviar pearls to repackage in 8-ounce portions as Valentine gifts. Check it out.

*A tartlet is an individual portion. A tart is a multiportion size, six inches or more in diameter.

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Milk chocolate caviar pearls. Photo courtesy Tienda.TorreBlanca.net.

OTHER CHOCOLATE CAVIAR OPTIONS

Godiva Chocolate Pearls. This item from the Chocoiste line seems to have been discontinued; it’s no longer on Godiva’s website. But it is on Amazon. In addition to the dark chocolate pearls, you can find milk chocolate pearls, mint dark chocolate pearls and white chocolate pearls, among other flavors, while they last. These chocolate pearls are larger than chocolate caviar pearls.

Venchi Chocolate Caviar. This fine Italian chocolate maker sells 1.4 ounces of chocolate caviar

in a classic glass caviar jar: $16.99 (or $12 an ounce). However, these are not round “pearls” but irregular “pebbles.” And given the price, it makes sense to buy the Callebaut chocolate caviar in bulk: You get 112 ounces for $56, or $2 an ounce.

Then there’s Gourvita: a retailer that sells caviar pearls made by Sosa Ingredients and packaged in the classic blue metal caviar tin. Gourvita is a German gourmet food store that sells the chocolate caviar on Amazon.com but ships it from Germany. A 100g (3.5 ounce) package is $33.90. That’s $9.69 an ounce—better than Venchi, but nowhere as good as the Callebaut bulk chocolate caviar.

Don’t forget the edible gold leaf.

And don’t forget to save a tartlet for us!

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