Baked Sunday Mornings: Malted Crisp Tart

This week's assignment for Baked Sunday Mornings was the Malted Crisp Tart, and marked my first-ever time making a tart. I just received a tart pan for Christmas this past year, and just have not had an opportunity to use it until now. I was excited to finally break it in!

I was concerned initially that this tart would not be very well-received, because as soon as my husband heard that this tart was "malted," he was pretty disgusted. He claims to hate anything that contains malt and despises the Whoppers candy that adorns this. However, I was pretty confident that if anybody could turn him around on the whole malt issue, it would be the guys of Baked.

Although there are many steps involved in making this tart, it is actually very easy to put together. The malted brown sugar crust is whipped up quickly in the food processor, then baked until golden brown. The malted milk chocolate ganache is then poured into the cooled crust, topped with caramelized crisped rice cereal and crushed malted milk balls, and left in the fridge to set. The malted diplomat cream (another first for me) is made while the tart chills, and was much easier to make than I thought it would be. It was also easily my favorite part of the dessert.

The diplomat cream is comprised of a pastry cream (seen above) that is pushed through a fine-mesh sieve and placed in the refrigerator to chill for at least an hour. Then, you whip some heavy cream to soft peaks and fold that into the chilled pastry cream. The resulting cream is thick but light, and definitely delicious enough to just eat straight with a spoon. Not that I did that or anything.

Finally, the tart comes together. The diplomat cream goes over the chilled ganache/rice cereal/crushed malt ball layer, and then more crisped rice is sprinkled on top. Whole malt balls are arranged, fancy-like, around the tart, and there you have it. One of the more elaborate desserts I've made to date, but completely worth every step. Everyone who tried this loved it....and that includes my malt-hating hubby! Yep, he ate a few slices, and actually raved about the tart. So, smugly, I pointed out that the Baked guys can, indeed, make the impossible happen.

So, it was another great recipe from Baked Explorations! Please make your way over to the Baked Sunday Mornings blog to check out all the other wonderful tarts the other members made!