Recipe - Chocolate tart

Chocolate tart

The whole tart serves 10 but I decided to use half the mix to make individual tarts and also individual desserts.

Filling

·         400 gm  dark chocolate (56% cocoa solids), finely chopped

·         260 ml  pouring cream

·         120 ml  milk

·         2  small eggs (50gm each), lightly beaten

For dusting:         

·         Dutch-process cocoa

To serve: 

·         vanilla ice-cream

Sweet pastry

·         150 gm  softened butter

·         100 gm  caster sugar

·         250 gm  (12/3 cups) plain flour

·         25 gm  almond meal

·         egg yolk

·         Juice of ½ lemon

·         Seeds of  ½ vanilla bean

 Method

1.       For sweet pastry, beat butter and sugar in an electric mixer, add flour and almond meal and stir to combine. Add egg yolk, lemon juice, vanilla seeds and 1 tbsp iced water and stir to combine. Pat into a disc, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate to rest (1 hour). Roll out pastry on a lightly floured surface to 5mm thick, line a 24cm-diameter fluted tart tin, trim edges and refrigerate to rest (30 minutes). Meanwhile, preheat oven to 180C. Blind bake tart until edges are golden (10-12 minutes), remove paper and weights, bake until base is golden (7-8 minutes) and set aside.

2.       Meanwhile, place chocolate in a bowl, set aside. Bring cream and milk to the simmer in a saucepan over medium heat, add to chocolate, stand until chocolate melts (1-2 minutes), stir to combine, cool slightly, then stir in beaten egg.

3.       Reduce oven to 130C. Pour chocolate mixture into tart and bake until just set with a slight wobble in centre (30-35 minutes). Set aside to cool, dust with cocoa and serve at room temperature with ice-cream.

This recipe is from the July 2012 issue of Australian Gourmet Traveller.

Image of whole tart courtesy of Gourmet Traveller. Individual dessert image and mini tart image taken by me.