Chocolate Irish Cream Tart

Our awesome friends, Pierce and Lindsey, invited Nicholas and me over for dinner a couple of nights ago.  As always, I wanted to offer anything I could!  Lindsey at first, via text message suggested we bring a "desert" over, in which I responded, "I don't know if we can manage a whole desert... but we'll certainly bring a dessert of some kind!"  (Sorry, Lindsey, just had to add the humor from the text conversation.  :)  Anna and my mother can both vouch that quite often, I miss a number of things as I'm quickly writing a message!).

So... that big bottle of Irish Cream that I got for St. Patrick's Day (when I found out you can buy alcohol at 10:00am in Texas...) has been sitting in the fridge and asking to be used for quite some time now.  'Another dessert,' I thought!  After searching numerous recipes online and finding things that only called for about a teaspoon or so of Irish cream, recipes that really just sounded awful, or called for a couple of ingredients that I didn't have, and since I didn't have the car at my disposal to get those few items, I was feeling "out of luck."  I finally stumbled upon a rather tasty sounding recipe... a chocolate tart!  Looking over the recipe, I found that I have everything (with the small adjustments I always end up making to a recipe to put my own stamp on it!) except for one thing... sweetened condensed milk...

I must be honest.  I have used sweetened condensed milk a number of times, especially when making a few bar cookie recipes that I LOVE.  But has anyone else ever been grossed out when opening that can?  I started looking for "sweetened condensed milk substitutes" in Google and, to my dismay, continually was finding recipes that called for milk powder.  "Well, that's great... lovely..." another thing I didn't have (and didn't want to own anyway).  I finally narrowed my search by adding "with milk" and came across a great site with a homemade recipe that called for, hold your chair, REAL milk!!!  I can't say I looked around after finding this recipe, www.kitchenstewardship.com got me started on the right track.  I adjusted her recipe a little, as I didn't have white sugar (only brown and powdered - can you tell that I'm using EVERYTHING I can?!) and didn't want to wait the 2+ hours she said it can take (and since I didn't quite HAVE those two hours), I sped the process up a little by whisking much more frequently and on a higher temperature, but came out happy in the end with the result.

And thus was born this chocolate tart!  (Inspired and adjusted from the recipe on Better Crocker - wanted a chocolate crust and a white whip cream topping - the opposite of what the recipe called for).

Chocolate Irish Cream Tart
tart dough
   1/2 cup butter (room temp)
   1 cup flour
   1/4 cup cocoa powder
   2 tbs powdered sugar
   1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 400.

Combine dry ingredients together and mix.  Fork butter in until a smooth, firm ball is formed.  This makes a rather unsweet crust, which I thought might be good, since the rest of the dessert was going to be quite sweet.  So if you want to make it a little more "cookie like," then add more sugar to the recipe (about a 1/3 a cup or so, depending on personal taste).

In either a tart pan, spring-form pan, or pie plate, spread dough over the bottom and about 3/4" up the side of the pan, making the crust as even as possible (unless you like a lopsided tart!).  :)

Bake for about 15 minutes.  Remove from oven, and allow to cool while you make the filling.

chocolate Irish cream filling
   1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk (for the recipe I used, look below)
   1/3 a cup Irish cream (or heavy cream if you don't want the alcohol)
   1 cup semisweet chocolate chips (melted)
   1/4 cup cocoa powder
   2 eggs

Turn oven down to 350.

If you're using a can of sweetened condensed milk, then heat the chocolate chips either in a double-boiler or in the microwave until smooth.  (If using the microwave, you must be very careful, checking it every 15-20 seconds once it begins to melt, otherwise you'll burn the chocolate chips and they'll taste nasty!  I learned my lesson QUITE early on in life with that one...  Whoops!).  Stir in cocoa powder to the melted chocolate chips.  Add the sweetened condensed milk, Irish cream, and stir.  Once the mixture has cooled down, add in the two eggs (make sure you don't add it while it's too hot, as you probably don't want cooked egg chunks inside your tart!).

Pour batter into crust and return to oven for 15-20 more minutes, or until the center is no longer loose.

Allow tart to cool completely, refrigerating once it has cooled, so the whipped cream won't melt on top!  (This should take about two hours or so).

Homemade Sweetened Condensed Milk
   3 cups milk (whole is probably best, but I used 2% as that's what we had)
   1 cup sugar (again, I used brown, but white would be "traditional")
   1/3 cup butter
   2 tsp vanilla

In a sauce pan, combine milk and sugar.  On medium-low (or medium on our stove...), stir mixture so sugar dissolves.  Once the mixture has come to a low boil, turn down heat to low (or simmer if you'd like to wait the full 2+ hours), stirring occasionally so that the milk doesn't burn.  I found a whisk helpful to keep the sugar incorporated.  Make sure you check on the mixture every five minutes or so!

Once the liquid has reduced to about half, check the amount in a measuring cup.  You'll need it to have reduced to about 1 1/2 - 1 3/4 cups.

At this point, remove from the heat, adding butter and vanilla, and stir until butter has dissolved.

When the mixture was still warm, I melted the chocolate chips inside the sweetened condensed milk I had made and allowed it to cool in the fridge for a short while before I finished making the filling.

Once the mixture was cool enough to add eggs to, in a blended, I poured the milk mixture, added the Irish cream, and cocoa powder and mixed until they blended together.  Remove from the blender and mix eggs in until mixed together.  Pour into tart shell as above and bake and cool as directed.

Irish Cream Whipped Cream
   1 cup heavy cream
   1/4 cup powdered sugar
   2 tbs Irish cream

With a hand or stand mixer, combine ingredients, and beat on medium-high to high speed until peaks begin to form.  Don't over beat, unless you want to spread some sweet Irish cream butter on your bread!

Put on cooled tart and place in fridge until served!

To serve, pour a little more Irish cream over the top, serve with raspberries, chocolate shavings, or whatever might sound tasty on top!  (Or really, you don't need to add much more.  It's pretty rich already!).