I keep telling myself that I’m going to start posting more savoury recipes on here.. but I’ve been pretty organised and got a fair few recipes ready and waiting.. and pretty much all of them happen to be sweet, typical me! The funny thing is, I don’t have a massively sweet tooth- but I just love creating desserts! I find so much enjoyment in making really beautiful, delicious tasting sweet treats and actually being able to get really creative and try and include lots of nutritious ingredients. This might just be me being a cooking fanatic.. but I just love experimenting in the kitchen and seeing what I can come up with!
These little tarts came around completely by fluke- I think I was meant to be making a different recipe and I made a little bit too much caramel filling for what I was making, so instead decided to turn it completely into something else, rather than have an excess of leftover caramel from something else. I find a lot of my favourite recipes actually happen this way- happy accidents!
The inspiration I suppose came about from my love for the classic combination of chocolate and peanut butter. I absolutely love making chocolate protein porridge and topping it with lots of delicious peanut butter- it tastes like a giant bowl of peanut butter cup goodness! I don’t know what exactly it is about this combination, but it just works SO well! Of course I’ve used my favourite cacao powder from Rainforest Foods to make these as well. I’ve mentioned this probably a million times before, but I am absolutely addicted to this stuff! I think I wrote something about this in a recent Instagram post; but my three favourite and most frequently used superfoods are cacao (of course), maca and matcha powder. I like these because I think they all taste good, have some wonderful properties and I find them such an easy thing to incorporate into my daily routine and recipes. This is something that I think people can sometimes struggle with when it comes to certain ‘super foods’ and ‘health foods’- is knowing how and when to use them. I also know that lots of people don’t necessarily love the taste of greens powders etc. However, with things like cacao and maca, they both taste amazing when added to sweet treats like: chocolate, cakes and biscuits and you can even use them to make a simple hot chocolate recipe by just adding some nut milk and heating everything together. Implementing easy, healthy recipes into my diet is what I’m all about and the message that I really want to represent on the blog and my social media accounts. Healthy food can be quick and it can be delicious. You don’t have to eat salad all day or force yourself to like things that you just don’t enjoy eating. If you have a sweet tooth and enjoy cakes and treats, then I don’t think you should have to miss out on those things all together. From my experience, stopping myself from having things and only allowing them on ‘cheat days’ has lead to me over-eating on those days and then binging on certain foods because I think that I won’t be able to have them again. Sorry for going off on a slight rant and tangent here, but this was just something that I think is important and wanted to get in there quickly (well.. perhaps it wasn’t so quick, so I apologise!)
The sweet caramel filling pairs really well with the chocolatey biscuit like tart cases and is just like a giant helping of sweet, peanut buttery toffee goodness! Beware, when you’re making these, you may find yourself wanting to lick the bowl clean before the filling even makes it into the tarts!
I think that these would be a really cute thing to make if you have a friend over for dinner for a girly night in.. or for a special date night dessert. I’ve used two smallish heart shaped tart cases with removable bases, as this makes it much easier to take them out. You can usually find them in lots of kitchen/cookery stores and probably come department stores as well.
