The recipe for this flourless raspberry, almond and chocolate cake was created out of a test I did one night some eight years ago. I had completely forgotten about it, until I visited the Orange Grove market a year ago where the same cakes in individual portions are sold.
When I first made this cake, we lived in Bondi Beach. I remember because it became the favourite after diner snack of a Swedish flatmate at the time, when she left, she specifically asked for the recipe (which I gave her).
Now, more important for some of you, this cake has no flour! If you run out of almond meal as happens to me from time to time, you can swap for hazelnut meal, I tried, it works!
Ingredients:
Makes a 20 cm ring cake.
40 g butter
2 tablespoon cocoa powder
100 g dark cooking chocolate
1/2 cup of buttermilk
2 eggs
50 g of caster sugar
75 g of almond meal
1 cup of frozen raspberries
Method:
Preheat oven to 160°C, line the bottom of a 20 cm diameter (or close to 20 cm) circular tin.
Melt the chocolate and butter together.
Add one after the other one, mixing well in between: the sugar, cocoa powder, and buttermilk.
Now, add the egg yolks one at the time keeping the eggwhites in a separate bowl.
Add the almond meal.
Beat the egg white to snow and gently fold in.
Pour the batter in the tin and spread delicately the raspberries on top.
Bake until the centre is settled (no longer wobbly).For the baking the key is to cook slowly to prevent burning.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool down completely before removing the cake from the tin.
This recipe is what I would call an everyday apple tart. It suits perfectly a simple family dinner, it is light and brings a nice finish to dinner. It is pretty simple to make, once you got the shortcrust pastry right. If you want to know more about pastries and their uses, I wrote a post some time ago on tartes.
For 6 people. Preparation, 15 min. Baking time 30 min.
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:
2 large apples (or 3-4 smaller ones)
sugar
and possibly (see options below 1 egg, some milk or cream, almond meal, butter and brown sugar)
Method
Prepare the pastry, by rubbing 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. if you need a bit more support, CLICK HERE, where I detail the process with photos. Roll the pastry and place in the tart tin (no need to butter/flour it, it will not stick)
Preheat oven to 180ºC.
Quarter the apples, peel and core them. Cut into further smaller quarters. Place in a circular pattern.
From here, you have 2 options for the finish, I do either or and like both.
OPTION A : sprinkle coarse white sugar and add a few nuts of butter, then lace in the oven.
OPTION B : mix one egg, half a cup of milk (or cream if not faint hearted), 2 spoons of brown sugar together and pour between fruits pieces. You may also add one tablespoon of almond meal. It is not critical for apples but is necessary if you use other fruits such as pears.
Bake for about 1/2 h, the sides must be golden, if you feel it is going too quickly reduce the oven to 160ºC.
The shortcrust pastry is traditionally used in France for both savoury and for a number of sweet tarts. You can prepare a batch and use over the week or even freeze. Unlike puff pastry, shortcrust pastry is rather rapid to make.
These steps will guide you through the preparation of the pastry. The quantities are for one tart, about 20 cm wide.
Tip: If you have remaining trimmings, you can put them together, reroll the pastry and make small one, maybe two small tartlets. Another use, is to spread them with brown sugar or jam and bake: then for the children’s snack.
Ingredients:
50 g of butter softened
100 g of plain flour
some cold water (about 1/4 glass – see recipe)
Method:
Place softened butter cut in cubes and flour together in a bowl.
2. Rub the soft butter and the flour together until all of the butter sticks to the flour.
3. Add water little at the time to obtain an homogenized ball. If you put too much water, add 1 teaspoon of flour at the time
4. Rest for at least half an hour at room temperature before using.
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.
5. When using, roll on a rolling mat, baking paper or directly on the work bench. Dust slightly the rolling area with flour to prevent sticking.
6. Use the rolling pin to transfer the pastry (roll it around the rolling pin, lift, transfer), then after placing use the rolling pin again to do the trimming (see photo).
Apple tarte fine means thin apple tart. The reason it has this name is due to the elegance of the dish, yet it remains such a simple dessert. There is slightly more work involved in the preparation of the tarte than a classic apple tarte. This is a traditional French tarte, most often found in bakeries. In Sydney, you can find some at Flour and Stone in Woolloomooloo or on market days at Orange Grove and Everleigh market (where Flour and Stone have a stall). There are probably other places.
The tart consists of puff pastry, apples, butter and sugar (very little). You may find some versions with Calvados, feel free to indulge. The recipe below is mine and remains simple.
Serves 6-8
Preparation – 30 min
Cooking – 30 min
Ingredients:
4 large apples
1 quantity of puff pastry (2/3 of the pastry obtained by my recipe here for a 37 cm diameter round tray – I use my pizza tray, alternatively use some commercial butter puff pastry)
About 50 g butter
Icing sugar (2 tablespoons)
Good quality redcurrent, apricot or strawberry jam (any of the first two is better) – for the shiny finish, optional
Method:
Preheat oven to 170 ºC (150 forced fan)
On a very lightly floured work bench, roll the puff pastry to a 5 mm thickness, place on baking paper on your baking sheet (no need to use a tart tin).
Delineate with the point of a knife the centre from the edge. With a fork, make holes using the teeth of the fork, as on the photo below. This will prevent the puff pastry from “blooming” underneath the apples.
Peel and core one apple, cut in small size dices, place in a saucepan with about 1/2 cup of water and cook until just tender. This will make a small apple puree to place below the apple, I find it gives the tart a better finish. You may have to adjust the water as it will depend on your fire and saucepan.
Smear the pastry centre with the apple puree (there will be left over most likely). Melt the butter and mix with 2 tablespoon of icing sugar. Brush all the exposed parts of the pastry generously.
Peel the remaining apples and core them without cutting through the fruits. You will now cut very thin discs of apple along the horizontal axis of the fruit. Once you have cut the whole apple, cut the circles in the middle so to get two piles of semi-circles.
With you hands pan out one pile of apple semi-circle at the time and place on the pastry. Repeat until all is covered leaving the edges exposed. Brush the remaining butter mix over the apples.
Cook for up to 30 minutes, decreasing the heat after 5 minutes to 160ºC. The tart’s edges will quickly become golden, no panic, keep baking at slow heat as you also want a bit of colour on the fruits and want the underneath of the pastry cooked.
In the meanwhile, prepare the final glazing. Place 2 spoon of jam in a bowl and add a few spoons of boiling water (2 to 4 depending on the jams) until you have consistency liquid enough to brush the tarte with. Alternatively, do this in a small saucepan on the stove.
Once the tart is out of the oven and still hot, brush over the fruits (not the edges!) the jam glaze. Be cautious to only put a thin layer.
This Dark Chocolate and Raspberry Muffins recipe from Bourke St bakery (the Ultimate Baking Companion) is a winner! Light, with chocolate and raspberries (what else?) and easy to make.
A couple important comments :
The recipe calls for large muffin trays, it is definitely the very large ones! The large ones you may have at home are perfect too, you will just end up with more muffins!
Use good quality muffin paper cases as the mix is quite liquid and otherwise will end up soaking the paper and the muffin will stick to the tin, it will be harder to remove them.
Makes 12 (or about 20 if you use the “home size” muffin trays)
A recipe from Bourke Street Bakery
Ingredients:
• 400 g plain flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 300 g caster sugar
• 310 g unsalted butter
• 480 ml buttermilk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 eggs
• 225 g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
• 225 g raspberries, fresh or frozen
• 55 g raw sugar
• Icing sugar, for dusting
Method
Preheat the oven to 190°C (375°F). Lightly grease a 12-hole muffin tin and line with paper cases.
Sift the flour and baking paper into a bowl and add the sugar, mixing well to combine.
Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat, then remove from the heat and stir in the buttermilk. Using a whisk stir in the eggs to combine. Pour over the dry ingredients and whisk to combine. Use a large spoon to gently fold through the chocolate and raspberries. Don’t overmix.
Spoon the mixture into the prepared muffin tins. Sprinkle the tops with raw sugar. Reduce the oven temperature to 180°C (350°F) and bake for 20-25 minutes. For smaller ones, cook for around 10 -15 minutes. It may be necessary to drop the temperature about 10 minutes before the end of baking time if the muffins are starting to brown on top.
To test if the muffins are done, push the top gently to feel that it is firm. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tins for 10 minutes before eating. Dust with icing sugar to serve.
Making puff pastry can seem scary to some. Until I followed a weekend puff pastry-croissants and brioche class, I had never tried. In the end, it is quite simple, there are a few steps and since there is no yeast (not like croissant dough) you can make the ball on day 1 and finish the rest on day 2!
A bit of background on methods used…
Now, you may see different types of method for doing puff pastry and be tempted to the quick one “Blitz method”, this is fine for a number of use but you need to know it will produce an uneven pastry. The one I will document here is the “French method”. The differences come from the way the butter is inserted into the dough. There are three main methods :
(1) SCOTCH or BLITZ. (2) ENGLISH. (3) FRENCH. There are three different ways of adding the fat:
The quickest way is the Scotch or Blitz method. It is suitable for making pastry for pies, sausage rolls and pasties. Flour, salt, cold water and dough fat are mixed together in a mixing bowl. Walnut-sized lumps of fat are then added to the bowl and are mixed in a little, to ensure large lumps of fat are left whole in the dough. The fat is distributed throughout the dough in flat discs, rather than a continuous sheet as with the other methods. As a result this pastry does not always rise evenly and so is not suitable for products that must look exceptionally good.
In the English method the flour, salt, water and dough fat are mixed together. This dough is rolled into a long rectangular shape, three times as long as wide. Two-thirds of the dough is covered by dabs of butter. The third without butter is folded into the middle first then the other end is folded on top.
The French method – The main feature of the French method is that a square layer of fat is wrapped in the basic dough. This dough is made by rubbing about 10% of the soft fat into the flour, then adding cold water and mixing well to make a clear dough. After testing it is rolled into a square, making each side half the distance between opposite corners of the dough. The fat is placed in the centre of the doughs in the diagram below and the corners folded into the centre so they meet and cover the join. The paste is then folded again.
The three main types of puff pastry are FULL,THREE-QUARTER and HALF. The difference between them being the total fat content:
FULL puff contains flour and fat in equal ratio.
THREE-QUARTER puff contains 75% of fat to each pound of flour.
HALF contains 50% of the flour weight.
I will be giving you the half puff pastry, I find it buttery enough and good to work with.
Classic Puff Pastry (or half puff)
Ingredients:
300 g bakers bread flour
150 g water
30 g unsalted butter at room temperature
6 g of salt
3 g of lemon juice or white vinegar – used for colour development
3 g of malt, or honey – again used for colour development
250 g unsalted butter , chilled, for roll in.
It is important that you get the right flour. Sourcing bakers flour can be challenging. The supernmaket bakers flour often comes with additives, do not use those. Bulk health food / organic stores sell bakers flour, a few italian grocers also do (by 12.5 kg bag). In Sydney Southern Cross Supplies does wholesales (again by 12.5 kg bag).
Method:
If you have a Kitchen Aid or similar, it is time to get it out, use the dough hook. By hand works well too.
Put together all of the ingredients EXCEPT the roll-in butter. Make a very rough mix and leave aside for 20 min, it is the hydratation process which will help the ingredients to mix well in the next phase.
If using a Kitchen Aid, mix on low (number 2) for 4 minute – time it out! If doing it manually, mix the dough until you get a ball then place on the kitchen bench repetitively pushing the ball sideways away from you from left to right, bringing it back then pushing it sideways away from you from the right to the left. Do this until the structure becomes elastic enough to stretch when you pull on it. Don’t overdo it, we are not trying to reach the development that we would with a bread (i.e. not enough to stretch it so thinly you can see through).
Wrap the ball in cell wrap, and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
While it is refrigerating, prepare your butter. You will need to have a metal dough spatula or plastic one (I use either one or the other for that process). If you don’t have any, try using a large straight wooden spatula, it won’t be as easy but should work until you get one of the dough spatula, they are a couple dollars only at kitchen stores.
Square of butter
Using a large knife, a chopping board and baking paper, cut slices of butter about 0.5 cm to 1 cm thick and place them on the baking paper next to each other like if to make a square jigsawpuzzle shape.
Cover with another piece of baking paper.
With a rolling pin, hammer (bang!) one side of the butter, this is called the plastering.
Remove the baking paper and with the plastic dough spatula homogeneise the thickness and tidy the sides of the square. The butter you remove on a thicker part is used to fill in the thinner parts (i.e. q=the quantity of butter remains the same).
Put back the baking paper, flip over, do the same.
Give one more round of plastering: rolling pin bang! + Clean up the top and edges of the slab.
Note: steps 5 to 8 can be replaced by a slightly easier folding method: spread the dough in a long strip slightly wider than the width of your butter piece and twice the length. Place the butter in the lowe part of the rectangular and fold over the other part, gently squeeze the edges together.
5. Now, it is time to enclose the butter: Get you ball out of the fridge and place on a very lightly floured work bench. Cut from the top down, halfway along two lines as a cross.
6. Putting your hand in the middle of the cross, holding one corner at the time, pull the corner towards you and open the ball: half of the dough will be left where it was (the lower half of the ball you did not cut through), half comes to you, shape it in the form of a square. Repeat with the other 3 corners.
7. With the rolling pin, adding flour underneath the pastry to prevent from sticking, expend you central section as a square the size of your slab of butter, then lay each wing very thin until you reach a square the same size than the central square.
Tip: extend one wing first halfway, then get onto the second one and so on until you go around, on the second round extend to full size.
Tip: don’t forget to add a tiny bit of flour to prevent sticking
8. Place you butter in the middle of the shape, fold back each wing at the time making sure you enclose the butter completely each time (top and sides), press slightly on the edges. Wrap in cell wrap, put on a tray and place in the fridge for 20 minutes.
The lamination is when you make the sheeting. Do a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 6 folds (or the fat will integrate the pastry dough and you will loose the sheeting) but no more than 2 folds at the time. Allow 20 minute rest minimum in the fridge (covered) between each set of folds.
9. Remove the pastry from the fridge, place on a lightly floured work bench. Here we will roll the pastry in ONE direction only. Roll away from you towards the back of the bench until 3 times its own length, about 1 cm thick.
Tip: you may need to turn your pastry 180 degrees around to roll each end the same way, this is fine.
10. taking the end further away from you, fold in one third removing all excess flour, then fold in a second time until you come back to your initial square shape.
11. Now turn the pastry 90 degrees to your left, to have it as if you were going to open a book. Again (this is the second fold) roll away from you until 3 times its own length, about 1 cm thick. Fold back in three. Place on a tray, cover with cell wrap, rest in the fridge for 20 minutes.
12. Remove the pastry from the fridge, repeat steps 9 to 11.
13. As above. Now you have all of the folds done. Rest the dough 20 minutes at least before using it.
The puff pastry will keep in the fridge for up to 3 days and in the freezer for up to 3 month.
These little Portuguese custard tarts are light, perfect for entertaining, be careful, they fly away! To make them, just use your larger size muffin trays!
Another version of creme patissiere (used as much as the previous one, it is a matter of taste) contains cornflour (maizena). The method is exactly the same, using the cornflour instead of the flour. This recipe call for 40 g of butter to be added at the end outside of the fire, just before transferring to the container. It gives it a nice finish taste (richer). For this version, use 1/2 L of milk, 1/2 vanilla pod or good quality vanilla extract, 60 g corn flour, 100 g sugar, 100 g egg yolks, 40 g butter.
Method
For the crème patissière:
Bring to the boil the milk and vanilla
In the meanwhile, beat the egg white, sugar and flour together
Pour a little milk over the egg mix while continuously mixing, then slowly pour back all of that mix in the saucepan with the remaining milk still mixing and cook on a slow fire. the mix will thicken. Remove when it starts to boil.
Pour into a plastic container and cover with a plastic film directly on top of the custard to avoid the forming of a skin.
Cool quickly.
For the tartlets
Warm the oven up on 180°C
Roll the puff pastry to about 3 mm thick, you will need to use a little flour to prevent from sticking
Cut squares to fit into a hole of your muffin tray (no need to butter the tray, there is already plenty butter in the puff pastry! it will not stick.)
Place the squares at the bottom of the holes
Fill with crème patissiere almost to the top
Beat the egg in a bowl with 1 tablespoon of water (or about), use a brush to brush the edges of the pastry with the egg-wash (do not egg wash the crème patissiere)
Sprinkle a little coarse raw sugar over the egg wash
Place in the oven, cook until golden brown on the edges about 20 minutes
Remove from the oven, turn the muffin trays over a cooling rack, the tartlets will pop out, some may need a bit of help, let them cool down.
Happy Easter! Do you need a little something to bring to an Easter party? Try these chocolate truffles, they are easy to make and very delicious!
All you need is a good quality chocolate, cream, butter and cocoa.
This recipe makes about 50 truffles. We made some this week, I brought one box at work and my daughter one box at school for an Show and Tell on “How you celebrate Easter” (just good timing!), they are delicious.
Ingredients:
330 g of dark chocolate 70% cocoa
25 cl (250 ml) of cream
50 g of good quality soft butter (real butter please, no substitute here)
Cocoa for rolling (I like using dutch cocoa)
Method
Cut the chocolate in small pieces with a large knife, place in a bowl.
Boil the cream in a saucepan
Pour the cream on top of the chocolate, cover for one minute then mix well until all the chocolate is melted.
Add the butter, mix well. Place in a shallow container and refrigerate for 2 hours minimum until firm.
When ready to shape the truffles, put a tablespoon of cocoa in a soup plate or large bottom bowl. With a teaspoon, scoop out the equivalent of a macadamia nut (for those who don’t know macadamia, it is between a walnut and an hazelnut). Roll in your hands to form a ball, then place in the cocoa and move the bowl around or roll the truffles with your finger tips.
Transfer to a serving plate or storage container.
This recipe of truffles does not have eggs, it will keep in the fridge for over a week. You may find they disappear before!
Tip: If you are using couverture chocolate, you need to be a bit more careful when doing the ganache to prevent splitting when adding the butter. you may want to melt 2/3 of the chocolate first, then the next 1/3 to the mix. If the ganache splits, warm it up slowly mixing until it comes back together.
Gateau Mozart (Pierre Herme) is a cake for celebration days!
The Gateau Mozart is a Pierre Hermé’s chocolate mousse cake combining chocolate, a subtle cinnamon flavour and cooked apples (in butter!). This recipe is part of Le Larousse du Chocolat. The cake consists of three thin and very friable disks of sweet cinnamon shortcrust pastry with layers of chocolate mousse and cooked apples. The recipe is rather easy, the difficulty is in making the thin circles without breaking them.
In my version, I wanted a cake higher than 4 centimetres, so I doubled the quantity for the mousse and apples (here I am giving the original recipe). I find that that the dough pastry makes 4 circles rather than 3 (one spare one just in case)!
Serves 6-8.
Sweet shortcrust cinnamon pastry
180 g butter, at room temperature and diced
40 g icing sugar
35 g almond meal
8 g ground cinnamon
2 hard-boiled egg yolks, thinly passed through a sieve
1 cl dark rum
Pinch of salt (except if using salted butter)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder (1/2 sachet)
200 g flour
In a bowl place the butter and work it with a spatula, add the icing sugar, the almond meal, ground cinnamon, salt, flour, egg yolks, baking powder and rum. Do not work the dough too much, it is very friable.
Rest for 4 hours cell-wrapped in the fridge.
Roll the dough between 2 sheets of baking paper to 2 mm thick and make 4 disks of 21 cm diameter. Watch out for creases. Place the disks flat in the fridge for half an hour. You may want to take only 1/3 of the dough each time and do one disk at the time. I find that 4 disks can be made.
In the meanwhile, preheat the oven at 180ºC.
Bake each disk for 18-20 minutes then cool down on a cooling rack (bake each disk on the baking paper you rolled it on).
Apple chocolate mousse
100 g Granny Smith apples – I like to double almost double the quantity of apple.
10 g butter
1 g cinnamon
35 g caster sugar
6 cl cream
2 cl of dark rum
1 small cinnamon stick broken
165 g dark chocolate 70% cocoa
120 g egg white
Peel the apples and cut in cubes. Cook in a fry-pan for 3-4 minutes with the butter, 10 g of the sugar and the cinnamon powder.
Add the rum and flambe.
Set aside to cool to room temperature
Bring to the boil the cream with the cinnamon stick, filter. Melt the chocolate in a bain-marie. Mix the cinnamon cream and chocolate together to obtain a ganache.
Beat the whites to snow with the remaining 25 g sugar, incorporate 1/3 to the chocolate, then the rest folding gently, add the apples and fold again gently.
Assemblage
Place one disk at the bottom of a 21 cm springform tin, cover with half of the mousse, now, gently add a second disk, cover with the remaining mousse. Place the third disk.
Refrigerate for a minimum of 30-45 minutes.
Run a knife between the wall of the tin and the cake. Remove the outer circle and base and slide on the serving plate.
You can now decorate the side with broken chocolate curls (or large pieces grated chocolate), you can also decorate the top with a little cocoa powder, cinnamon sticks and sliced apples.
This “pudding aux marrons” or chestnut pudding is a personal recipe. It is a delicious delicate and light dessert. It combines the earthy flavour of the chestnut with the moistness of a steamed pudding. It is also gluten free.
The photo above is a variation from this recipe. This recipe requires baking in a closed pudding bowl in bain-marie whereas on the photo the pudding was cooked in a half bain-marie with the tin opened to the top. Our au-pair did not know what a pudding tin looked like and adapted to the situation, she did a great job at managing a very good desert. I will change the photo when I make the pudding next.
You can make you own chestnut puree, it does take a bit of time thought but at least you can control the sweetness of it or you can find cans of chestnut puree in deli shops. This recipe is based on a chestnut puree unsweetened with chestnuts cooked in milk (as opposed to water). If you are using canned chestnut puree, adapt the sugar quantity.
The cooking time is quite long (about 1 hour).
Serves 8.
Ingredients
250 g of chestnut puree cooked in milk and unsweetened
6 eggs
180 g of caster sugar
125 g of almond meal
60 g of butter
vanilla extract
Method
Pre-heat the oven at 160°C
Add to the chestnut puree, the egg yolks one at the time, preserving the white in a clean bowl.
Add to the mix, the vanilla, sugar and almonds
Add the softened butter (it works as well if melted)
Beat the egg to snow to firm peaks
Gently fold the egg white into the mix.
Butter the pudding tin well. Pour the mix in it. Close the tin. If you do not have a lid, you can use a couple layers of aluminium foil and some string to make a lid.
Cook for close to an hour. The first time you make this pudding, you may want to check the cake around 50 minutes cooking time with a thin skewer. Try to do so quickly not to loose too much heat. the pudding should be (if not cooked) very close to it, and will not collapse. The skewer should come out from the cake dry (no uncooked cake sticking to it). Replace in the oven if necessary.
This sticky date pudding is a recipe from the Country Women’s Association of Australia. The book it is in, is called “Country Classic”. The CWAA as it is known here does a lot of baking, but not only baking, they have general family centered objectives.
Here is their recipe. It is easy to make and quite rapid. If you ever tasted a sticky date pudding in a restaurant, the home made version is 10 times better!
Small warning, it is very sweet! but not sickening sick.
Ingredients
1 cups dried pitted dates, coarsely chopped
1 1/4 cups water
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
60 g butter
3/4 cup caster sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1 cups self-raising flour
Sauce:
1 cup soft brown sugar
125 g butter
150 ml cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Method
Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fan-forced). Grease and flour a tin.
Place dates in a small saucepan with the water. Bring to the boil. Cook until combined.
Beat remaining ingredients and add to the dates. Mix well.
Pour into prepared tin.
Bake for 25 minutes or until cooked
For the sauce, combine all ingredients in a saucepan and boil for 5 minutes. Cool down slightly and pour over the pudding to serve.
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!
Pear chocolate tart, out of the fridge (due to the heat) and having a sweat. I would not put it in the fridge normally.
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
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.
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.
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.
Melt the butter and chocolate and spread over the top of the tart. Leave aside and allow the chocolate topping to set.
