Chocolate ginger tartlets with honey borboun figs

Figs! It's fig season! Most people right about now are posting all of the pictures and recipes of freshly picked berries (which I love, and which actually grow in Vermont), but OH MAN FIGS!! I may have a slight obsession with figs and curse Costco's name when they run out of the giant bags of dried ones. But fresh is so much tastier, and fig season is up there with pumpkin season in my book.

This was an experiment that resulted from having three pounds of figs in the fridge and wanting to try that trick that's been all over the web of making cookie cups on an upside-down muffin tin. (Spoiler: it works!) I had originally come across a similar recipe for a chocolate tart in a ginger crust, but it seemed like it was 90% chocolate ganache, and while chocolate ganache is rather heavenly, it can easily overtake other flavors and textures. On the other hand, I found a recipe for chocolate ginger cookies on the Taste and Tell Blog that looked like the perfect carrier of said ganache and figs. So I present my own fig experiment, whose results were classified as Dangerously Tasty.

(Sorry I didn't put a doily under these to make it pretty. Or notice the glare. Oops.)

Ingredients:

For the cookie/crust/thing:

1 stick butter, room temp

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

1/2 cup molasses

2 cups flour

3 TBS cocoa powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp cloves

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

1/4 tsp nutmeg

pinch salt

For the chocolate ganache:

1 1/4 cup bittersweet chocolate, chopped fine

3/4 cup heavy cream

For the figs in honey bourbon ginger sauce 

About a dozen figs, halved

1/2 cup bourbon

2 TBS honey

1+ tsp ground ginger

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 and combine cookie ingredients in usual fashion: cream together butter, brown sugar, and regular sugar until smooth or fluffy or whatever adjective seems right to you. Beat in egg and molasses. Add dry ingredients gradually, beating together on the lowest setting and alternating flour with everything else. Wipe splattered dough off the counter, floor, and dog.

Give the underside of a mini muffin tin a spritz of cooking spray. With about a tablespoon of dough at a time, roll a ball, and pat down over the bottom (top?) and sides of the upside-down muffin cups. You will want the dough to be fairly evenly distributed and almost but not quite touching the underside of the top. Wow, words are hard. Here's a diagram:

(Art was never really my thing.)

Bake about 15 minutes, and upon removing them from the oven, immediately trim any excess that may have spilled over, giving you adjoined cups.

While the cookie/crust/thing is baking, make the ganache: place half the chocolate in a bowl, and heat the cream to a simmer. Remove from heat and pour over the chocolate. Stir to blend. Add more chocolate gradually until it has all been incorporated. Allow the ganache to cool.

While cookie/crust/thing and ganache are cooling, prepare the figs: place in a saucepan with the bourbon, honey, and ginger, and simmer until the liquid volume has reduced by half.

Assemble the tarts: Into each cookie/crust/thing, pour ganache most of the way up. Top each with a fig half, and pour the bourbon syrup over the tops.