Leftover Gingerbread Cookies: Chocolate Tart with Gingerbread Crust

My mother always buys a bag of fresh cranberries and keeps them in her fridge – just to look at, because she thinks they are pretty. I think I do the same at Christmas time with gingerbread cookies. I always make them, and no one eats them, and eventually I give them away. Well the other night I was trying to figure out what to do with all the cookies leftover, and I thought, they would be good crushed and made into a tart or cheesecake base.

I had quite a few leftover cookies from the Gingerbreads I made before Christmas. If you did not have enough to crush into a cup you could mix them with chocolate or graham crumbs to equal a cup.

For the crust:
1 cup of finely crushed gingerbread cookie crumbs. Or a mix of gingerbread and chocolate or graham crumbs.
0.25 cup white sugar (optional – the cookies already have sugar)
6 tbsp of melted butter.

Preheat oven to 350F. Melt butter and mix in the cookie crumbs and sugar if using, until it resembles coarse wet sand. Press the crumbs into a 9 inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Press crumbs across the bottom and up the sides. Bake the tart for 10-12 minutes until it starts to pull away from the sides. Watch that the cookies do not burn. Remove from oven and let cook completely in pan.

Baked Gingerbread Crust

I added a chocolate filling in the tart. The filling was not the priority for me. This was more an experiment with the crust. I made a basic chocolate filling that set well over night.

For the filling
1.25 cups 35% cream
9 oz bittersweet chocolate
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
0.25 tsp salt
Fresh grated nutmeg
Fresh grated cinnamon

Bring cream to a boil, add nutmeg and cinnamon, then pour over chocolate in a bowl and let stand 5 minutes. Gently stir until smooth. Whisk together eggs, vanilla, and salt in another bowl, then stir into melted chocolate.

Pour filling into cooled crust. Bake until filling is set about 3 inches from edge but center is still wobbly, 20 to 25 minutes. (Center will continue to set as tart cools.) Cool completely in pan on rack, about 1 hour.

Top with unsweetened whipped cream.