Chocolate Ganache Tart with Strawberry Marble...

...And spiked with Bailey's Irish Cream! Mmm. On top of my famous shortbread (i think i got the recipe from Martha Stewart, whoo!), the chocolate ganache glistens and the strawberry puree marble just adds a fruity sweetness to the yummy dense tart. i was desperate to give these away because i knew that, if i didn't, i would end up sitting on the couch eating every slice. buut i might as well share the recipe here and make the rest of the world just a little bit fatter :)

cream together a cool 1/2 cup (1 stick) of butter and 1/3 cup powder sugar.

...just until it looks like this. 

i wanted to make it chocolate-y so i added 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder and it was the perfect amount! i sifted both the cocoa powder and AP flour into the butter and sugar. i also added a cap-full of vanilla extract while this was mixing. 

once the dry ingredients have been slightly incorporated, i started kneading it to bring everything together. whenever i make this shortbread, it always seems like it's too dry to form into a dough, but if you keep kneading, it will happen! 

the dough looks too dry...but keep kneading! 

once that comes together (see, it's beautiful!), wrap it in plastic wrap and leave it in the fridge for 10-20 minutes. this will make the dough easy to stretch so it can efficiently fill the cake pan/tart pan. 

you can either roll the dough out with a rolling pin or use your hands to stretch the dough out to the edges of the pan. before you leave it for 30 minutes in a 300F heated oven, fork the shortbread to prevent it from puffing up (even though it doesn't really matter...it's going to be covered in yummy ganache anyway...) 

after half an hour, my whole apartment smelled like chocolate brownies. it was great. 

For the ganache, pour 1 cup of heavy cream into a small saucepan on medium high. once it starts to go on a rolling boil, take it off the heat and pour it onto 12 ounces of chocolate (i used one pack of 10 oz. 60% ghirardelli baking chips and then 2 oz of semi-sweet chocolate because that's all i had in my fridge) 

Leave the heavy cream and chocolate to settle and meld for a quick minute and then use a whisk to mix these together. 

While mixing, add 1 tablespoon of butter and 2 cap-fulls of Bailey's. the butter makes the ganache shiny and the Bailey's...gives it a kick :)

pour the ganache into the cooled shortbread crust and shake the pan around so the ganache distributes evenly. 

i had leftover strawberry puree from my cupcakes, so i marbled it on top of the ganache. mmm!

cool the ganache tart in the fridge for a minimum of 2 hours.
so easy to make! 

ingredient list

1/2 cup butter

1/3 cup powder sugar

1 cup AP flour

2 tablespoons cocoa powder 

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup heavy cream

12 oz. chocolate with 60% cocoa content

 1 tablespoon of butter

2 teaspoons Bailey's (optional)

strawberry puree (optional)