This Dark Chocolate Almond Tart is free of everything everyone isn’t eating right now: gluten, soy, grain, dairy, eggs. And, it’s vegan to boot!
Can I get a fist bump?
I hate to boast, but I kind of outdid myself with this recipe. Sure, I’ve made vegan and gluten-free recipes in the past–Blueberry Muffin Energy Bites, Chocolate Chip Cookie Energy Bars, and Healthy Peanut Butter Buckeyes are just a few examples–but I never intentionally set out to make them vegan and gluten-free. They just sort of naturally came to be. I happened to use vegan and gluten-free friendly products without realizing it until I was composing the posts.
But this recipe… Well, let’s just say I knew what I was doing. Okay, so I stumbled through it a bit, as I’m not an expert in vegan and gluten-free cooking/baking, but in the end, I made a damn tasty Dark Chocolate Almond Tart. Again, I’ll take that fist bump.
I want to make one thing clear: this tart tastes just as decadent, just as chocolate-y, just as creamy as its butter, refined sugar, dairy-laden counterpart. If I never mentioned the word vegan and had you try this pie, you would never know.
How do I know this, you ask? Did you test out your theory, you ask? Yes. Yes, I did, because I knew you would ask these questions. So, I made it a point to use Squirrel and my sugar-obsessed father as test dummies. I put a slice of tart in front of each of them, and I didn’t dare mention the words vegan, gluten-free, healthy, naturally-sweetened, or any other scary word that would have caused them to refuse the slice of tart I so gingerly and excitedly placed in front of them.
Guess what? They were none the wiser. I’m sitting on the sidelines in a fit of laughter as they’re shoveling in bite after chocolate-y bite of what I know to be a ridiculously tasty tart. In the end I cough up the truth about the tart, but they’re too busy eating and making the sounds one makes when they like what they’re shoveling in to care about my dictionary dot com definition of vegan.
Seriously, where’s that fist bump?
I should also mention that I didn’t use avocados, bananas, or silken soy as the base for the chocolate filling. Instead, I reached for a can of coconut cream I had stocked in my pantry for a little over a year–don’t worry, it wasn’t expired. I picked it up on a spur of the moment shopping trip to Trader Joe’s, thinking, “Oh, the things I could do with this!” So it took a little longer than expected to sort through those “things.” I eventually made a tart, and isn’t that the noteworthy detail here?
The filling is extremely easy to make. It takes as long to make as the chocolate takes to melt and requires very few pantry ingredients, the main components being the coconut cream and good-quality dark chocolate.
Now for the crust… Whoa, is the crust amazing! While I’d like to say the chocolate filling is the MVP here, I won’t do it, because the toasted almond crust is mind-blowing. The crust is a combination of Diamond of California Almonds, gluten-free old-fashioned oats, coconut sugar, almond butter, coconut oil, and vanilla extract. It gets baked until toasty perfection and has the most delicious crunch you ever did taste. It’s the perfect contract to the velvety smooth chocolate filling.
I’ll take that fist bump now!
Disclosure: This recipe was developed for the lovely folks at Diamond of California. All opinions are my own. Thank you for supporting my recipes and site while I work with brands I adore.