In addition to chocolate cream puffs, I also made Milky Way tartlets for New Year's Eve. The base of the tarts is a pâte sucrée shell that is dotted with caramel, piled high with milk chocolate mousse, and garnished with chocolate curls.
I learned how to make these when I worked at Flour. They involve a multistep process of making the mousse, making the caramel, and making the tartlet shells. All of these components can be made ahead of time and put together up to a few hours before serving the tartlets.
The night before New Year's Eve, I made the milk chocolate mousse filling, which needs to be refrigerated overnight so it will whip up properly. The next day, following the same method I used to make the tartlet shells for my chocolate-pumpkin tartlets and using Joanne Chang's pâte sucrée recipe, I made the tartlet shells and let them cool.
If I had been making my own caramel, I would have made it the day before too, but I cheated a little (I hate to admit it) because we have a huge tub of caramel that we use for making caramel machiattos. To save myself a little time, I put some of that caramel in a squeeze bottle instead of making it from scratch (shh... don't tell).
I whipped the mousse while Jeff squeezed a little caramel in the bottom of each tart shell.
I decided to pipe the mousse into the shells, but you can also just pile it in there, depending what look you prefer.
Then I made some milk chocolate curls to throw on top. I learned to do this at Flour as well, and the method I learned is to pull the back of a paring knife along the edge of a block of chocolate (I always buy blocks of Callebaut at Whole Foods for this). You could also use a vegetable peeler or just grate chocolate on top as I did with the chocolate-pumpkin tartlets.
You can find the recipe for the full-size Milky Way tart on Leite's Culinaria. It's delicious both ways, but you know me: I prefer the minis.
What candy-bar based desserts have you tried, or which ones would you love to try?