More than just a Chocolate Tart

This recipe offers all the elegance of fine dining and a dream for a food stylist

Ingredients for the Chocolate tart:

A short crust pastry base home made or store bought –
roughly 400g pastry, baked blind and painted with egg yolk to seal.

For the filling of the Chocolate tart:

375 g Dark chocolate – 70% Cocoa minimum
875 ml double cream
70 g sugar
4 egg yolks, 5 if they are small
a decent pinch salt

Consider substituting one of the tablespoons of sugar for lavender sugar or chilli orange vanilla sugar

Method for the Chocolate tart

Preheat oven to 130° c

Mix together cream and sugar in a saucepan and bring to the boil on a moderate heat. Once boiled, remove from heat and mix in chocolate. Stir gently until all chocolate has dissolved and mixture is smooth and glossy.

Mix yolks in a separate clean bowl and whisk combine. Pour chocolate mixture into eggs and add pinch of salt. Mix well to form the ganache.

Gently pour the ganache into the prepared short crust base and bake for approximately 45 minutes or until just set in the centre.  To stop the edges of a store-bought pastry from blackening cover the edges with foil.

When tart is still hot, use a sharp knife to trim any excess pastry at the rim of the chocolate filling, giving the tart a professional straight edge.

Dust with cocoa if desired.

Food stylist tip: Bake the tart a day in advance to give it sufficient time to set and make cutting easier, heat a sharp straight cutting knife in hot water, remove from the water, dry the knife swiftly for a smooth professional finish, if you need to be posh.

Dress the plate with a few fresh berries, a long thin cut biscuit and the smear shown is a chocolate sauce infused with Nutella ….. Shhh!

Enjoy! x