♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Today on "America's Test Kitchen," Keith makes Julia the ultimate Nutella tart, Jack talks all about chocolate, and Lan makes Bridget the perfect chocolate toffee bark.

It's all coming up right here on "America's Test Kitchen."

"America's Test Kitchen" is brought to you by the following.

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♪♪ -Nutella, the ubiquitous chocolate hazelnut spread is a great shortcut for all sorts of desserts.

And today, Keith's going to show us how to make a Nutella tart.

-Yeah, Nutella's great right out of the jar.

It's really, really tasty, but it's a little soft and a little too sweet to make a tart filling without adding some other ingredients to it.

But before we get to that filling, I want to make a crust that will really showcase that chocolate hazelnut filling.

So we're going to actually make a pâte sucrée.

It's a French tart dough.

It's nice and fine, it's nice and tender, and it's also very sturdy, which is great for this recipe.

So I have one egg in here, and I'm going to add a teaspoon of vanilla.

So I'm just going to whisk this.

I have 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour here.

To the flour, I'm going to add 2/3 of a cup of confectioner's sugar.

There's not a lot of moisture in here, so confectioner's sugar is key.

And I also have 1/4 teaspoon of table salt.

I'm going to just pulse this two times for everything to come together.

[ Mixer pulses ] Okay, now for the butter.

I have 8 tablespoons of cold butter down there.

-Mm, nice and chilled.

-Now we want to work this butter into the flour completely, so I'm just going to let this run for about 20 seconds.

[ Mixer whirs ] You can see that we've worked all that butter into the flour.

-Oh, yeah.

Look at that.

-Yep, so you can't even notice it.

And now I'll put our lid back on.

While the machine is running, I'm going to add our egg mixture, and that's going to bring this together into almost like a cookie dough appearance.

So this will take about 18 seconds.

[ Mixer whirs ] Okay.

So you can see that it looks like a cookie dough.

A lot of recipes will take this dough and chill it down before you roll it out.

We're going to swap this around a little bit.

We're going to actually roll it out while it's still warm and quite soft.

-Ah.

-That way, we can get a crust that's really thin.

That's the key, is rolling it out while it's soft to get it nice and thin.

-Very clever.

Also it's a lot easier.

I mean, I've struggled with chilled doughs.

You kind of got to beat 'em up a little bit with a rolling pin.

-And they also have a tendency to crack coming out of the refrigerator, too.

-Yeah.

-So we won't have any cracking while it's warm and malleable.

So I'm just going to take this, and I'm going to work it into a half-inch-thick piece of dough with my hands.

I want to make sure that I'm doing this from both sides, because sometimes if you roll this out all on one side without flipping it over, you'll get puckers on the other side where it stretches out, and you don't want that.

Now, what I'm looking to do here is I want to roll this out until I get to the sides of the parchment.

It's kind of a built-in measurement device right here.

So with, like, any tart dough, you want to start from the middle and roll out.

If I kept rolling just one side... -Mm.

-...these little creases right here would get deeper and deeper, and those are what's going to cause cracks.

So making sure that we have no creases.

Now, when you get to this stage, you can start to roll out the corners a little bit more.

-Oh, you can see the cracks it left behind.

-Yeah, so we don't want that.

So we want to peel that up.

And then I just want to take the side of my hand and press those out so we don't have any creases here.

This is a key step.

It might not seem like a key step, but this is really important.

Okay, so I'm going to take this now and transfer it over to our rimmed baking sheet.

We want to put it in the freezer for 30 minutes and allow that to chill down so we can get it into our tart pan.

-Okeydoke.

-It's been 30 minutes and our dough has chilled and now it's time to get it into the pan.

So first thing, I'm going to take this parchment and gently peel it off.

And I'm going to put that back.

I'm going to get rid of this top piece so we can cut the dough, but I'm going to leave it on the bottom because, as this warms up, the dough does get a little sticky and tacky.

So we want to leave that parchment in place so we can work with it.

-Okay.

-So now a lot of people would take this dough and roll it on a pin and try to get it into the tart pan.

And if you have ever done that... -It's a mess.

-...it's a mess.

So we're going to do something a little different.

I'm going to take this, the bottom of our tart pan.

I'm going to treat it like a big cookie cutter.

And that's going to give us the approximate size of the tart base.

That is our tart bottom.

Now to do the tart sides.

-Yeah.

-So I'm going to come over here.

I'm going to take a paring knife... -Mm-hmm.

-...and I'm just going to take a ruler and I'm going to cut like this.

Make sure it doesn't stick.

I'm going to measure one inch from here, one inch from here.

And you can connect the dots.

You probably need 2 to 2.5 of these strips, but if you have strips left over, you can always sprinkle them with a little bit of sugar and bake them as a cook's treat.

That's really the best.

I'll also mention, if this gets too warm when you're working on it, If your kitchen's really hot, you can pop this back in the freezer just to let it sit up for 5, 10 minutes and I'll just take our bottom, pick this up, and then I'll just put this right in here.

The top of this is a little bit bigger than the bottom.

So I am going to have to press this in just a little bit.

And you just take your thumb and press that right into the corner there.

I want to make sure we have a nice, sharp edge in the bottom.

Now we can take our strips.

Now, for these, I want to make sure that I work these into the flutes really well.

So I'm going to take one thumb and kind of push it into the flute.

And then for the next flute I'm going to push the crust in just like that.

So I'm kind of taking the crust and pushing it in to that fluting.

This will shrink a little bit.

That's okay.

It's inevitable.

-Mm-hmm.

-But if you just kind of press everything in there without kind of working it into the flutes, it will shrink even more, and we don't want that.

I want to take my paring knife and cut that.

Like so.

Now I'm just going to come around, make sure that we press the seam together... -Mm-hmm.

-...where the edges meet the bottom.

Okay, so we have this all worked in there nicely.

Before I trim the edges, I'm just going to freeze this for another 20 minutes to kind of firm that dough up so we can bake it.

-Okeydoke.

-It's been 20 minutes and the dough is firm enough where I can trim it.

So I'm just going to take a paring knife and I'm going to keep it parallel to the cutting board and I'm just going to pull the knife through that crust towards me.

If I haven't gotten the crust into that crimp, it will work it into the crimp.

Okay, that is ready to go.

So we need to put some pie weights in there so it doesn't slump.

So I have a piece of foil that I've sprayed with vegetable-oil spray.

-Mm-hmm.

-And I'm just going to take this.

And I like to push this down around my fist, put it down on the center, and then I can kind of work from the center out to the edges.

Okay, just want to make sure that that is pressed in nicely.

Now I'll take our pie weights.

-That's a lot of pie weights.

-We want to make sure this is really full all the way out to the edges, all the way up to the top.

So we are ready to bake.

I have this on a rimmed baking sheet to make handling it a little easier.

I'm going to put this in a 350-degree oven on the middle rack.

I'm going to bake it for 15 minutes... -Mm-hmm.

-...rotate the pan, go for another 15 minutes.

I'll take the foil out, and let it go for 10 minutes longer until it's browned on the bottom.

-Okeydoke.

-Okay, let's check on our tart.

-Ooh, that looks beautiful.

-It's great.

Golden brown.

So this has been baking for a total of 40 minutes, and I took the foil off after 30 minutes to let it get golden brown.

So if I can ask you to turn that to 375.

-Sure thing.

-Okay, so we just want to let that crust cool.

While that's cooling, we're going to toast some hazelnuts for our filling.

So I have 1 cup of skin-on hazelnuts.

I'm just going to lay these out onto a rimmed baking sheet.

We're going to put that in a 375-degree oven.

That's why I had you turn up the oven temperature.

We're going to let these toast for 15 to 20 minutes, and what we're looking for is the skins will start to wrinkle up and peel off, and we can get rid of that skin.

Our hazelnuts have been toasted for 15 minutes, and they've cooled enough for me to handle.

And you can see that skin is blistered... -Mm.

-...and it's really easy to peel off.

-Yep.

-So I'm just going to gather all these together, transfer them over to a towel, And all I'm going to do is take it, gather the towel together, and just rub these together and let them abrade that skin right off one another.

Hopefully, when we open this up... -What?

-...they will be all skinned.

-I have never seen such an efficient skinning in all my life.

-That's pretty good.

You have -- -Yeah.

-You know, if you have something like that, that's okay.

It's not a big deal to have a little bit of skin on there.

-Mm-hmm.

-So I'm going to take 24 of our most perfect hazelnuts and set them aside for garnish.

I will take the rest of these, and I'm going to coarsely chop these.

And these are going to go in the bottom of our tart below the filling... -Mmm.

-...and add a nice crunch to our tart.

It's going to be great.

What I like to do here is just cut them in half almost, and they kind of break apart into coarse pieces.

They kind of shatter on their own.

Once you make that one cut, they kind of split again.

They're going to add the perfect texture to this tart.

Okay, so I'll just take a bench scraper and grab these all up.

I'm adding our hazelnuts to our completely cooled tart crust.

That's been at least a half an hour for that to cool.

For our filling, like I said earlier, Nutella is great out of the jar... -Yes, it is.

-...and it spreads really easy on a piece of bread, but it doesn't make a great tart filling.

The flavor's there... -Mm-hmm.

-...but it's a little too sweet, and, like I said, it's too soft, so we need to firm that up a little bit.

So we're going to make a quick ganache, which is a mixture of cream and chocolate.

That's going to help firm up our filling.

So I have 1/2 cup of cream in this small saucepan, and I'm just going to bring this up to a simmer with 2 tablespoons of water, and that water will just facilitate the mixing of that ganache to the Nutella later.

-Okay.

-The cream for our ganache has come up to a simmer.

And I'm just going to shut that off.

I'm going to add 2 ounces of bittersweet chocolate... -Mm-hmm.

-...and 2 tablespoons of butter.

I'm just going to swirl that around.

Now, the chocolate and the butter are going to melt now, but when it chills down... -Mm-hmm.

-...they're going to become firm, and that's what's going to solidify our filling.

-Ah, very clever.

-So I'm just going to put a lid on this and let that go for five minutes and let that chocolate melt.

It's been five minutes, and our cream should have melted our chocolate and butter nicely.

So I'm just going to whisk this until it's smooth.

Here is our 1 1/4 cups of Nutella.

You're going to take this and pour it over the Nutella.

We don't want to get this too, too warm because the Nutella will start to seize up.

It smells good, doesn't it?

-It sure does.

-Okay, so it'll look grainy for a little bit... -Mm-hmm.

-...but that's okay.

It will come together with some whisking.

That looks good.

And now we can go into our filling.

I want to do this fairly slowly.

I don't want to displace those hazelnuts, so I'm just going to let that blot.

-Oh, goodness.

-Doesn't that look great?

-That is a beautiful shot of the chocolate just drizzling down over those toasted nuts.

This looks like an ad.

-Okay, so make sure all hazelnuts are covered.

That looks great.

It's level.

So I'm going to set this in the refrigerator for 15 minutes before we add our garnish hazelnuts.

If we go right now, they'll start to sink in.

We don't want that to happen.

It's been 15 minutes, and we've had that filling set up just a little bit, so we can do our garnishing now.

So I have 24 hazelnuts.

So I'm going to start with west.

-[ Chuckles ] -East.

North.

-You went for the compass not the clock.

-[ Chuckles ] And south.

-[ Chuckles ] -So I put four out originally at 12:00, 3:00, 6:00, and 9:00... -[ Chuckles ] -...and then four more in between those two.

And now I'm just going back and putting two hazelnuts in between each one of those.

-Well, that's a nice way to make sure you have them evenly spaced around.

-So now I'm just going to take some plastic wrap and just loosely drape this over.

Okay, so now this is going to go back in the refrigerator for at least an hour-and-a-half.

Make sure that that filling is set and nice and firm.

Okay, this tart has chilled for an hour-and-a-half, and it's time to unmold and eat this.

-It is absolutely beautiful, Keith.

-It is beautiful, isn't it?

-Mm-hmm.

-Take this up, and hold that with one hand, transfer it over, I'm going to come over here, and I'm just going to take a thin, metal spatula.

The thing I love about this crust... -Mm-hmm.

-...is it's really nonstick, and the tart pan is nonstick, so it makes it really easy.

You can see that it's already moving.

-Mm-hmm.

-Slide it like that.

-Beautifully done.

-[ Exhales sharply ] That's the hard part.

[ Both chuckle ] Now comes the easy part -- cutting and eating.

I like to use a chef's knife for this rather than anything else.

The pressure is a lot easier to get a nice even cut.

-Mm-hmm.

Snap through that crust.

Oh-ho!

I almost forgot about the hazelnuts in the bottom.

-I like a little whipped cream on top of this.

-Yes, please.

-A dollop for you.

-[ Chuckles ] I am looking forward to digging into this.

-Oh, me, too.

Mmm.

There's a thin layer of filling, but it has so much flavor.

And that crust, it's like a perfect short cookie.

Nice and crisp.

-It's nice and thin, too.

So you don't have this big slab of crust overwhelming the filling.

-Mm-hmm.

-You have more filling and just a nice, sturdy crust underneath there.

-Those little hazelnut bits in the bottom.

Oh-ho!

-They add a lot.

Not too sweet.

-No.

And the filling has such a creamy consistency.

Keith, this is superb.

Thank you.

-You're welcome.

-If you want to give this Nutella tart a try, start by using the food processor to make a quick tart dough, freeze the tart shell before baking it with pie weights, and for the filling, make a Nutella ganache from "America's Test Kitchen," an easy and impressive recipe for Nutella tart.

My daughter will flip for this.

-Yeah, the kids like this.

Yeah.

♪♪ -It will probably come as no surprise that I'm kind of particular.

If you'd like details, I suggest you call my wife of nearly 40 years, and she'll probably recount the story of when I asked her to go shopping for chocolate recently.

And rather than 60% cacao chocolate, she brought home 70% cacao chocolate.

Yes, this didn't go over very well.

And that's because of the sugar content.

Now stick with me here.

70% cacao chocolate has a lot less sugar and will perform differently in a recipe.

So it really makes a difference whether you're using bittersweet or semisweet, and even within the same category, which brand you choose and why we're so particular here at "America's Test Kitchen" about your chocolate.

So I'm going to break it all down for you so there are no marital disputes, hopefully, in your household, starting with cocoa nibs.

So this is basically unprocessed chocolate.

It's been roasted, and the beans have been broken up into these little coarse nibs.

Think of this as unsweetened chocolate chips.

You can add a 1/2 cup to your favorite muffin recipe, quick bread recipe, or granola to get a burst of pure chocolate flavor.

Now, if you were to grind these nibs finer, melt it, and liquefy it, you'd have this, which is unsweetened chocolate.

So this is our winner from Baker's.

It has a classic fudgy flavor with a hint of bitterness.

When you want intense chocolate flavor in brownies or cakes, unsweetened chocolate is what you want to be using.

So if you take out most of the fat, you have cocoa powder.

This is our winner from Droste.

It's dutched, which means it's been alkalized during processing so it has a higher pH, lower acidity, and more chocolate flavor, as well as a darker color.

This is really great also when you want intense chocolate flavor, because there's less fat and more flavor in your cocoa powder.

Now, if we start adding sugar, we get bittersweet chocolate.

Now this is our winner from Ghirardelli.

It's a 60% cacao chocolate.

Yes.

This is the one I wanted.

It's 40% sugar.

So basically, the balance is going to be sugar.

This has a lovely sort of coffee espresso flavor.

This is a high cacao chocolate -- 85%.

It's from Lindt.

This is not really something I would bake with, but it is wonderful for nibbling.

It's almost like a competition.

"Oh, I can have 80% chocolate."

"Oh, I can eat 90% chocolate."

85% is pretty bitter, but it's got just enough sugar that you can really appreciate the chocolate.

And finally, something my wife and I can both agree upon is that we love milk chocolate.

Now, I'm not talking about those bars of childhood that have about 25% cacao.

I'm talking about our winner here, this Endangered Species, which is 48% cacao.

Has those milk solids, so it's really creamy and the mouthfeel is wonderful, but it has a lot of intense chocolate flavor because it has a lot of chocolate.

So there you have it.

Everything you needed to know about chocolate.

Probably more than you need to know about my marriage.

♪♪ -You know it's the holidays because the stores are filled with tins of overpriced confections, including chocolate bark.

It's never as good as its bite until today, because Lan is going to show us a better homemade version.

-Bridget, we're going to make a chocolate-toffee bark that's way better than anything you can buy, and it's a ton of fun to make and to give.

-Great.

-So we're going to get started in a medium saucepan.

I've got 8 tablespoons of unsalted butter, along with a 1/2 cup of water.

I'm going to turn this to medium high.

Butter is really important for toffee.

It contributes some of that flavor that we want, that malty, butterscotch-y complexity.

The water is here to help us ensure that all of the sugar dissolves before it caramelizes.

Butter's all melted.

Let's get the rest of the ingredients in.

I've got 1 cup of granulated sugar here.

It's going to go right in.

There's not really any need to stir.

That sugar will slowly melt.

To that, I'm adding 3 tablespoons of corn syrup and a 1/4 teaspoon of table salt.

I'm just going to let this come to a boil.

What I'm looking for is for all of that sugar to dissolve.

And then, you'll see it's going to start to change colors.

It'll become a pale golden brown.

And that takes 10 to 14 minutes.

At that point, I'm going to lower the heat.

-Okay.

Great.

-Bridget, you can see that it's starting to pick up color.

I'm going to turn the heat down because it goes pretty fast at this point.

And I'm going to swirl the pan to make sure that I'm getting an accurate reading on the color and the temperature.

What I want to do is to make sure this gets to a stage where it'll set up and be brittle.

The temperature I need to nail for that is anywhere between 350 and 360 degrees.

-Okay.

-So while we're checking the temperature, I'm just going to keep swirling the pan.

I'll tilt the pot to make sure that I'm not tapping the bottom of the pot.

So, just under 360.

I want to get this off the heat so that it doesn't get any darker.

And to that, I'm adding a 1/2 cup of chopped toasted pecans.

-Mmm.

-I'm just going to stir that in.

The nuts are going to cool this a little bit to kind of stop the cooking.

-[ Gasps ] I've got a foil-lined 13 x 9 pan, and it's been lightly greased.

I'm just going to transfer this toffee.

-Oh-oh.

-Now, it'll set up fairly quickly, and I'm not worried about having this be perfectly aligned into the corners because we're going to add some chocolate to fill those gaps.

So we're going to let this cool.

That's going to take about 30 minutes at room temperature.

-Okay.

-The toffee is set.

It's been half an hour.

Let's get some chocolate on here.

-Okay.

-I can't just melt this chocolate and pour it on top.

It won't set up properly, and it'll melt in our hands.

And we don't want that.

-Mnh-mnh.

-What I'm going to do is take my 3 ounces of chocolate, I'm going to melt it very gently at 50% power for 1 to 2 minutes, and I'm going to stop and stir it pretty frequently every 20 or 30 seconds.

-Okay.

-So the reason I'm doing this is I want to very gently melt that chocolate so it keeps its crystal structure as much as possible.

-[ Microwave beeps ] You can see it's just starting to melt on the bottom.

It's really important to stir so that we don't get any hot spots in there.

And I'm just looking for this to be about 2/3 melted.

I'm not trying to get it to be perfectly smooth.

-Okay.

[ Microwave beeps, hums ] -So this looks great.

Do you mind pouring in the remainder of the chocolate?

That's another ounce of finely chopped chocolate.

-Alright.

And we're using what kind, semi-sweet?

-Yeah, I like a semi-sweet for this.

It's got some complexity to it.

Look at that.

-Ooh.

-Nice and smooth.

-Very silky.

-I'm going to scrape this over the toffee and just spread it with -- I like to use an offset spatula for this.

Just makes it a little bit easier to do evenly.

-It's just a little veneer here.

-Yeah, just a thin coating.

But don't worry, we're going to put more on the other side.

Plenty of chocolate.

This looks pretty great.

Now that this is smooth, I'm going to throw some pecans on top.

I've got a 1/2 cup of chopped toasted nuts.

If you have walnuts, they're great in here, too.

I'm just looking for some nice coverage.

The little bits of dust that you get, they look great on here, too.

I don't worry about that.

Now that the pecans are evenly strewn over the top of the chocolate, this needs to set up.

It's going to do that in the fridge, and it'll take 15 minutes.

This has set up nicely.

-Yes.

-So we're going to use that sling to get it out of this pan.

-Oh, lovely.

-Great.

Now we just need to get some chocolate and nuts on this side.

I have more chocolate that I've melted very carefully to make sure it keeps its temper.

I'm just going to spread it over the top.

This is another 4 ounces of semi-sweet.

We'll spread this out.

-The side is so much smoother, obviously, because it was on the bottom of the pan.

Oh, look at that.

Did you ever work in drywalling?

[ Laughs ] -I mean, I guess... -You've done a great job.

-...if this gig blows up on me, I'll move on to that.

So last 1/2 cup of pecans right over the top.

-Oh, lovely.

-And I'll pop this back in the fridge for another 15 minutes for that second side to set up.

-Great.

-Alright, here's the most fun part of all of this, we get to break this up into squares now that the chocolate has set.

-You mean it's eating time?

-Yeah.

-[ Laughs ] -We're going to pretend like we're going to give this away, right?

-Right.

Exactly.

-Yeah.

So I like to just pick it up and give it a nice snap.

-That breaks lovely.

-And I'm just shooting for rough squares, we'll say.

Any ones that I don't manage to break into squares, we're just going to have to... -Remove the evidence.

-Yes.

This is pretty thin.

So it breaks pretty nicely, which also means bites really nicely.

-Fantastic.

-You want to have a taste?

-Yes, please.

I'm going to take this one.

-Going for a big one.

-It's lighter than air.

Mm-mm-mm.

Super snappy chocolate.

-Mm-hmm.

Nice, rich, buttery flavor.

The salt comes through.

-And that layer of toffee is not too thick.

-Mm-hmm.

-It is so thin, each veneer, you have that chocolate.

You have that impossible salted toffee layer that's really crisp in there, too.

It almost reminds me of honeycomb.

-Mm-hmm.

-You promised perfect bark and you delivered.

-Oh, I'm glad you like it.

-Thanks, Lan.

So how about that toffee?

Well, why don't you make it?

It starts by using both water and corn syrup to make an easy toffee.

Temper the chocolate in the microwave and cover each side of that beautiful toffee with chocolate and nuts.

So, from "America's Test Kitchen", your brand new holiday gift this season -- chocolate-toffee bark.

You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season, along with product reviews and select episodes.

And those are all on our website, AmericasTestKitchen.com/TV.

Mmm-mm.

-Visit our website where you can sign up for our free e-mail newsletter for even more of the recipes and stories you love from all of our cast and cooks -- AmericasTestKitchen.com/TV.

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