Chocolate Hazelnut Tart

This Silky Chocolate Hazelnut Tart is an easy, quick, and super delicious dessert for chocolate and hazelnut lovers! It requires literally zero effort, you do not even have to turn the oven on yet the tart recipe makes a silky, creamy rich chocolate hazelnut dessert that everyone will enjoy. As rich as it is, this tart is also balanced in sweetness without added sugar, we can sort of call it healthy!

Jump to:

• Why this is the best tart recipe
• Ingredient notes
• 3 Expert tips about the technique
• Other No-bake dessert recipes
• Chocolate Hazelnut Tart

Why this is the best tart recipe

1. It is rather easy – As fancy as it looks, this is a super easy Hazelnut Chocolate tart using a few everyday ingredients. It contains a no-bake hazelnut crust and a super quick filling, chocolate hazelnut dessert literally cannot be easier
2. It is super delicious – I never compromise on taste! This tart is super luxurious, silky without being overly sweet. Chocolate and hazelnut notes are dominating in a lovely crunchy crust. Absolutely out of this world!
3. No special equipment is needed – All you need is a loose based tart pan you probably already have at time

Ingredient notes

For the hazelnut tart crust

1. Butter: Use always unsalted as you want to be in control of the quantity of the salt. I am using 82% fat content butter in all my recipes. While in most of the recipes butter needs to be at room temperature, this is an exception. The butter needs to melted in the microwave
2. Biscuit base: Digestive Biscuit, Graham cracker or any other biscuit crumb makes the best no-bake tart cases. Use the biscuit that you would use to make cheesecake crust
3. Hazelnut: Taking a few minutes to toast hazelnuts make the flavor to a whole new level. After that, pulse blend hazelnut with the biscuit of your choice to get a lovely nutty biscuit crumb base. Alternatively use hazelnut meal / hazelnut flour
4. Sugar: You do not need extra sugar for the crust given the biscuit already contains enough sugar plus it will be crunchy anyway, so no sugar!
5. Salt: An essential ingredient in most dessert recipes. Balances flavor and enhances other ingredients. This is a lovely sweet hazelnut tart crust and I just love that extra very mild salty kick at the end

Exact ingredient quantities can be found in the RECIPE CARD, at bottom of this recipe.

For the chocolate hazelnut ganache filling (gianduja tart filling)

1. Chocolate: The chocolate tart will be as delicious as the quality of the chocolate you are using. Please please please use high cocoa content chocolate which you would anyway enjoy eating on its own and avoid using “baking chocolate”. I am using Callebaut Dark Chocolate (callets) which is semi-sweet chocolate, tastes amazing, and works wonderfully silky while making ganache
2. Heavy cream: Also known as whipping cream, has a fat content between 36% and 40%, the one I use is usually 36%. Avoid substitutes like vegetable-based “whipping cream”
3. Hazelnut paste or butter: You can easily make hazelnut butter at home. If you purchase it, make sure you buy 100% hazelnut paste that does not contain added sugar or oils, etc, it will make a huge difference in the taste of your Chocolate hazelnut Pie. It has the texture like peanut butter, slightly oily, and has a super deep nutty flavor without being sweet (no added sugar). I do not recommend replacing this with chocolate hazelnut spread, or Nutella since they also contain a lot of sugar

Exact ingredient quantities can be found in the RECIPE CARD, at bottom of this recipe.

3 Expert tips about the technique

1. How to make the crust

Making the tart crust for the Chocolate hazelnut pie is literally mixing the ingredients together however based on your questions from earlier there are a couple of useful notes I would like to share:

1. You can use a food processor to make the biscuit crumb or do the old fashion way and crush it in a zipped bag with a rolling pin
2. Hazelnut needs to be processed with a food processor however make sure you do stop as soon as hazelnut achieves a powdery consistency. If you keep processing the hazelnut, it will start releasing some oil and become hazelnut paste. Best if you process it with flour, less chance to get super oily hazelnut
3. Mix butter and biscuit & hazelnut crumb while butter is runny (melted). Butter will act as a binding agent in the crust recipe. Once it is cooled in the fridge, it will set creating a crunchy, but firm crust to hold the filling. You might have a bad experience from the past with no-bake crust being too crumbly and not holding its shape, it’s probably due to not enough butter in the recipe or it was not set properly
4. When butter is melted the mixture might be runny depending on the temperature of the butter but do not add more biscuit crumbs. Pop it into the fridge for 5 minutes, it will set very quickly into a consistency you can use to press the crumb into the tin
5. The one and only secret of making firm, neat tart crust is to press crumbs firmly and evenly into the bottom and on the sides of your tin. Find some equipment in your kitchen eg. a small cup or bend a spoon. Place crust into the freezer and let it set for 30 min while preparing the filling

Pro tip: Invest into a tart pan with a loose base, mine is 8inch / 20 cm like this one. It will be super easy to get the tart out of the tin with the loose base

2. How to make Chocolate hazelnut ganache filling

Making the ganache filling for this Chocolate hazelnut tart is extremely easy and quick! It also tastes amazing...and you will need only 3 ingredients!

Chocolate ganache is literally chocolate and cream mixture with endless uses; cakes, cupcakes, tarts, etc. As usual, the quality of the ingredients will highly impact the end result. While taste is obviously very important, in the case of chocolate the quality goes way beyond taste, good vs poor quality chocolate that can make or break any recipe. I recommend to chose a high-quality brand with high cocoa content chocolate to avoid disappointment.

Regarding the cream, I am using heavy cream that has 36% fat content. Do not make this ganache using low-fat creams or vegetable creams.

Chocolate ganache is a 1:1 mixture of chocolate and warm cream and this chocolate hazelnut ganache is basically a chocolate ganache with added hazelnut paste

1. Place finely chopped semi-sweet chocolate into a bowl or use Callebaut Dark Chocolate (callets)
2. Place hazelnut paste into the bowl with the chocolate
3. Heat cream until just simmering. If it’s boiling, the cream is too hot and could burn the chocolate. If the cream is not warm enough, it won´t melt the chocolate properly and won’t emulsify
4. Pour warm cream over the chocolate & hazelnut paste
5. Let the mixture sit for a minute then stir together or use a blender to emulsify

3. How to assemble this Chocolate Hazelnut Tart

Making this recipe is so easy but requires some patience. You just can’t rush certain steps or it will make a mess.

1. The crust needs to get frozen / properly set before pouring the chocolate hazelnut ganache filling in. The crust should set in about 30 min in the freezer
2. Then, pour the chocolate hazelnut ganache filling in
3. Let the filling be fully set before proceeding with decorating. The ganache will set in about 3-4 hours in the fridge, leaving it in the fridge overnight is even better
4. You can remove the tin either before filling the tart or after the ganache is set, but do not attempt to move the crust out of the tin until the crust is properly set
5. Decorate with roasted hazelnut

Store refrigerated.

Other No-bake dessert recipes