Chocolate Tart

One of my birthday presents was Jaime Oliver’s ‘Cook with Jaime’, and while I have yet to try one of the many intriguing and sometimes strange food recipes, this recipe caught my eyes. It is a chocolate pastry shell filled with double thick chocolate mousse. How could I not make it?

The recipe called for one 28cm tart dish, but I only had the 23cm dish, so I divided it up into the small dish and a rectangular casserole.

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Chocolate Tart

Ingredients

Pastry

• 150g of Unsalted Butter
• 100g of Castor Sugar
• 250g of Plain Flour (sifted)
• Zest of One Small Orange
• 1 Large Egg
• 30g of Cocoa Powder

Mousse Filling

• 200ml of Whole Milk
• 568ml of Double Cream
• 30g of Castor Sugar
• 350g of Milk Chocolate (grated)
• 2 Large Eggs

I made the mistake of grating the chocolate on before the tart had cooled, hence the oozing chocolate death above.

Method

Cream together the butter and sugar, then fold in the flour, orange zest, egg and cocoa powder. When the mixture looks like breadcrumbs, work it gently into a ball and then flour lightly. Do not work the pastry too much or it will become elastic and chewy rather than crumbly and short as it should be. Wrap the dough in clingfilm and put it in the fridge for at least an hour. Remove the pastry from the fridge, grease a 28cm tart dish and line the dish with it.

Bake the pastry shell in an oven preheated to 180°C for 12-15 minutes or until  it’s firm and almost biscuit-like. Remove from the oven and turn down the heat to 170°C.

Out of curiosity, I only cut the crust of the square tart (above) while I pressed smooth that of the round tart. Both are pleasing in different ways.

For the filling, put the milk, cream and sugar into a saucepan and slowly bring to the boil, stirring gently. Take off the heat and add the chocolate, whisking until smooth, then add the eggs and whisk again. Pour the filling into a jug. Put the baked pastry shell back into the oven, carefully pull out the oven shelf and pour in the filling. Push the oven shelf back in and bake for 15 minutes. The tart is cooked when the filling has a slight wobble to it; remember that it will keep firming up as it cools down.

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