I realize that this is a recipe that would have made a lot of sense to post on or before Valentine’s Day, as it would make for an easy but decadent treat to whip up for your sweetheart.

I assure you though, these little beauties are just too good to relegate to but one day of the year.

Now, I am typically not a jam-lover. I will choose the “quadruple-chocolate white chocolate chip with macadamia nuts and lugnuts and madness cookie” any day over some ole’ jam-studded thumbprint cookie. But for a tart, well to me a tart needs fruits to really be a very good tart at all, and so for these sweet little tart babies, only jam would do.

You can’t very well have a tart without a crust though! I made this simple rawish chocolate crust pretty quickly in my food processor:

• 1/2 cup raw cashews
• 1/2 cup raw almonds
• 1 tbsp. + 1 tsp. cocoa powder
• 1 and 1/2 tsp. agave nectar
• 1 and 1/2 tsp. chocolate almond butter
• 1 tsp. coconut butter
• less than a pinch of salt

Just blitz the nuts first til they’re teeny, then add everything else and blitz again.

I used a mini muffin pan to mold my tart shells. First, I sprayed the pan with non-stick spray then added little strips of wax paper to the bottom so that I could use them to pull the completed tart shells out later.

I put heaping spoonfuls of the mix into each cup and came up with enough for 14 shells. Just press the mix tightly into the bottoms and press up the sides, then press around the tops to make them smoother. Make sure to press them very tightly so they hold together.

A little dollop of jam goes in each, then a bit of chocolate almond spread tops it off.

I used Crofter’s jam and the same MaraNatha spread that I used in the crust (and on my toast some mornings.)

Biting into one of these for the first time had my eyes rolling back into my head!

Sooooooo…..insane!

I started off wanting to make a raw dessert but the almond butter and jam are not raw ingredients.

You could absolutely make a raw dessert out of this though by filling the cups with something like mashed bananas with cinnamon or maybe a raspberry cashew cream. You’d need to replace the chocolate almond butter in the crust too, not sure what I’d use there though.

Raw or not, I’m really proud of these.

No-bake chocolate jam tarts

Simple chocolate jam tarts in easy molded no-bake shells.

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Yield: About 14 tarts

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup raw almonds
• 1/2 cup raw cashews
• 1 and 1/2 tsp. agave nectar
• 1 and 1/2 tsp. chocolate almond butter
• 1 tbsp. + 1 tsp cocoa powder
• 1 tsp. coconut butter
• less than a pinch of salt
• jam and chocolate almond butter for filling

Cooking Directions

1. Pulverize nuts in food processor.
2. Add other ingredients and pulse to incorporate.
3. Mold crusts in a mini muffin pan and set in freezer to harden.
4. Fill with jam and top with chocolate almond butter.
5. Store in refrigerator.

What kind of filling would you use in these little tarts?

February 19, 2011 Alayna Discussion, Recipes 13 comments

I need to hit up the market today if I’m gonna have anything to make for dinner tonight.

Such was the case last night too. What started as just a quick swing up to Sushi Avenue to fill our growling tummies turned into a rather eye-opening experience. We had been meaning to go there and order hot dishes rather than sushi for a while now. Last night was the night.

Started off innocently enough with the standard miso soup and gingery salad.

Next, takoyaki time! I love the takoyaki at Sushi Avenue. The pieces are huge and cooked through a bit more than other places, so it doesn’t turn into goo as soon as you pick it up. They use really cheap bonito flake though, it’s pretty flavorless and looks more like that stuff you find in the bottom of an Easter basket than shaved dried fish flakes. No prob, just swirl it around in the delicious sauce and squiggles of Kewpie mayo, all that floss will melt right in.

This is supposedly just a wintertime special though, so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to have it again any time I’m craving it. Jeff thinks it might be time for us to buy a takoyaki griddle for the house. I don’t know about that. Takoyaki is an unhealthy treat food, I don’t know if I want instant access to it and all it’s delicious sauces.

It might be fun to experiment with using the takoyaki griddle to make something different though. Maybe I could make some kind of little vegetable puffs or even a sweet donut-hole type thing.

Ok, moving beyond takoyaki. Jeff ordered the katsudon, which is a bowl of rice topped with a breaded and fried pork cutlet with caramelized onions and egg.

You think Japanese food is all sushi and clean healthy veggie fare? No way man, dishes like the one above are pretty standard, however, the portion of the one above is somewhat larger than average.

I used to make katsu at home pretty often, maybe it’s time to bring it back.

I got another Japanese staple dish that many people aren’t aware of. Curry. Yep, the Japanese eat curry too. Theirs is a very rich, stew-like curry with subtle but not overpowering Indian spice flavors. It’s pretty common to crack a raw room-temperature egg over this and mix it in to make a super-creamy sauce.

The curry roux for this is often sold in solid bars perforated into little squares, much like a chocolate bar. You just mix the roux with liquid, add steamed vegetables and the thinly sliced meat of your choice and serve over rice. It’s a pretty common meal to have at home because it’s so easy to prepare and so comforting.

This one was served with an assortment of pickles. Pickles are another very common Japanese staple. They are so much more than just salty brined cucumbers though. These pickles are an art form.

The yellow ones in the front are sweet pickled daikon slices, it’s pretty common to add sugar or mirin to pickling liquids to make a very sweet flavor. The purple, I’m pretty sure they were cucumbers and that they were pickled in ume plum juice and/or ume vinegar. The little green ones are very much like cornichons, they are small, crunchy, and very salty.

I miss all the colorful and various-flavored pickles we had on top of rice in Japan. I think I’m going to start learning how to make some myself at home.

I’m so glad we opted out of ordering sushi last night. With the girly J-pop music playing over the speakers, lemony smell of raw fish in the air, and two hot bowls of Japanese classics in front of us, it really felt for a moment like we were back on Dotonbori street in Osaka cramming our faces full of one amazing dish after another.

February 17, 2011 Alayna Discussion 3 comments

Squeeeee!

Our shipment of tea has finally arrived from China!

First of all, I am so excited to to unwrap my very first bing of real pu-erh tea. That’s what it’s called when it’s pressed into a disc shape, it’s called a “bing.”

I’ll go into what all the numbers and such on the packaging mean when I get around to reviewing it.

I pressed my face into the back and took a deep whiff of it immediately. It has a smell of wet blond wood, kind of like a wine cork but without the wine smell, of course.

We also picked up two samples of other pu-erhs, I forget what these are. The packages do not appear to be resealable so I chose not to open them yet, though I’d really like to smell them too.

We also got a gaiwan, which is a lidded cup that you can either brew tea directly in or just use to sift particulate out of brewed tea. The lid helps to hold back any bits you don’t want to drink.

It is carved out of chalcedony, and is charmingly imperfect.

And now, the crowning glory, our new Yixing clay teapot…

See those speckles? To know that you have a pot made from real Yixing clay, it should have these speckles imbedded in the clay, not just on the outside. Some pots are colored to seem authenically speckled, but it’s just a coating, not a property of the clay itself. Fakers.

You can’t just pluck her out of the box and start brewing though, oh no. In the next day or two I’ll show you how to clean and season a new teapot and tell you all about why we needed a new one for brewing pu-erhs when we already have one. Really neat stuff.

Done geeking out now!

February 16, 2011 Alayna Discussion 3 comments