Pear & Chocolate Tart

This pear and chocolate tart is a beautiful desert, it is light, fresh and delicious.  Nobody at the table will know what that chocolate is hiding!   This pear and chocolate tart combines the delicateness of the pears and of melted chocolate.  You will need ripe pears, you may want to plan ahead if your grocer only sells hard stone pears.

This desert does not need to be placed in the fridge, except if the weather is very hot, or the chocolate-butter cover will sweat like on the photo here when taken out of the fridge.  This results in a photo not quite so perfect unfortunately!

As for the level of difficulty, it is easy to medium, you will need to make the pastry, precook it and then cook it again until set. Serves 8

Ingredients:

For the pastry:

• 50 g of butter softened
• 100 g of plain flour
• some cold water (about 1/4 glass – see recipe)

For the filling:

• 3 large ripe pear (Williams or Packham variety) cored, peeled and mashed up (use the electric mixer)
• 2 tablespoons of flour
• 4 eggs
• 60 g caster sugar
• 50 ml of cream

For the chocolate cover:

• 70 g dark cooking chocolate
• 40 g butter

Method

1. Prepare the pastry: in a bowl rub the soft butter and the flour together until all of the butter sticks to the flour. Add water little at the time to obtain an homogenized ball.   Rest for at least half an hour at room temperature.Tip: if your butter is hard (from the fridge), cut the butter in small cubes and let to soften on top of the flour.

   Tip: you can prepare the pastry ahead of time, wrap it and place in the fridge.  Remove from the fridge  1/2 h to an hour before using. 

2. Preheat oven to 180 º Celsius. Using a rolling pin, roll the pastry on a pastry mat or sheet of baking paper.  Transfer to the dish and trim the edges.  With a fork, make small holes at the bottom of the tart to prevent the formation of bubbles during the blind bake.
   Bake for 15-20 min or until light brown. Remove from he oven.
3. Prepare the mix by adding to the pear puree, the eggs, sugar, cream and flour. Mix well. Place in the tart leaving 0.5 cm height at the top. Put back into the oven and cook until set. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
4. Melt the butter and chocolate and spread over the top of the tart.  Leave aside and allow the chocolate topping to set.