Mont Blanc Tartlets

Snow capped mountains of chestnut and meringue-studded chantilly cream. # 315: Mont Blanc Tartlets

Ok so we took a left turn into obscure French pastries this week. Welcome to the world of sugar-snow capped chestnut mountains. Making them tiny definitely turns the mountain inspiration ironic, but now you too can have a tiny version of the Alps in your kitchen!

This unique tart has two elements that made me do a double take: crunchy meringue mixed into the whipped cream filling, and a piping design that resembles a pile of chestnut-flavored angel hair pasta. Piping tiny circles of chestnut cream evenly feels finicky for no reason – but that might have actually been the whole point! A Parisian pastry shop claims to have created the fiddly dessert in the mid-1800s as their signature dessert.

While they were trying to set themselves apart, they didn’t invent the piping design. It was apparently popular at the time to add a pile of thinly piped cream on top of pastries. I’m feeling trendy in a 19th century sort of way.

I couldn’t resist! Sorry France, it’s spooky season.

Chestnut is far from a common American baking ingredient. Catch me wandering the aisles of three grocery stores before finally caving and asking customer service at Berkeley Bowl. When he checked their system, only one other can of chestnuts had been purchased in 2023. Make that two! A little can has never felt more like hard-won treasure.

Braaaaiiins.

Bubble bubble, toil and trouble. But actually: if you take your eyes off the milk for a second, it will boil over. Oops!

Making a tiny batch means that instead of food processor magic, we get to use an immersion blender in a mason jar. A little clunky, but we got there in the end.

Fun fact: the American Chestnut tree used to be so prolific on the East Coast that it was said a squirrel could travel from Georgia to Maine through their canopies without ever touching the ground. Sadly, the majority of them were wiped out in the early 1900s due to an invasive fungus, but I still love the idea of a squirrel highway in the trees.