Chocolate Tart

At the weekend it was my friend Chloe’s birthday party and sleepover. Chloe and I have a long lasting joke about Our Love of Pie and we thought our sleepover would be a perfect opportunity to make one together! We decided on a chocolate pie because we both adore chocolate, but in the end we made a tart.

It was an easy recipe to follow and we didn’t make any alterations. We thought about doing a lattice lid but decided we weren’t sure how to cook that with the tart! We also had a slightly smaller tin than the recipe suggests but we were fine eating the leftovers! We made a slightly makeshift contraption so that the pastry would bake blind but because it was a bit too small and not quite heavy enough, the edges did rise a bit. In future I would make this tart in my pie tin which has the inner layer to let it bake blind properly. Luckily, this did not affect the taste one bit!

Chocolate Tart, from roast chicken and other stories by Simon Hopkinson.
For the pastry: 175g/6oz butter
65g/2 ½ oz icing sugar
2 egg yolks
225g / 8oz plain flour
For the filling: 3 egg yolks
2 whole eggs
40g/ 1 ½ oz caster sugar
150g/ 5 oz butter
200g/7oz dark, bitter chocolate, broken into pieces
1. To make the pastry, put the butter, sugar and egg yolks in a bowl (or food processor) and work together quickly. Blend in the flour, and work to a homogenous paste. Chill for at least one hour.

2. Preheat the oven to 350’F/180’C/Gas Mark 4. Roll out the pastry as thinly as you can and use it to line a 20.5cm/8 inch tart tin. Bake blind in the oven for about 25 minutes or until pale golden in colour but cooked through.

3. Remove from oven and increase oven heat to 375’F/190’C/Gas Mark 5.
4. Meanwhile, to make the filling, put the egg yolks, whole eggs and sugar in a bowl and beat vigorously together, preferably with an electric mixer, until really thick and fluffy. (For some reason Chloe and I beat for ages and still could not get fluffy – and only fairly thick. It didn’t seem to matter we just had a runnier mix.)
5. Melt the butter and chocolate together in a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water, stirring until smooth. Pour onto the egg mixture whilst just warm. Briefly beat together until well combined, then pour into the pastry case.
6. Return to the oven for 5 minutes, then remove and leave to cool.
7. Refrigerate over night. Serve with thick cream.

I loved this tart! Very rich and creamy, even after a night in the fridge. The recipe didn’t include this last step but it was very necessary. On Sunday, it was the party! About 10 of us went to Fortnum & Mason’s Ice Cream Parlour. It was amazing. We could each choose 3 flavours of ice cream and have them either in a bowl or in cones in a little stand. I chose R & P (chocolate ice cream, marshmallow, biscuit and strawberries – but actually just chocolate!), Toffee (vanilla with crunchy toffee in) and Lemon Curd. The Lemon Curd was my favourite it was exactly like Lemon Curd out the jar! Two plates filled with sweets such as jelly beans, candy letters and aniseed balls came to decorate our ice creams with. We all had freshly squeezed orange juice to drink and after our ice cream came the most massive chocolate cake! It was very impressive but most of us were too full to finish our mega slices! Here are my pictures. My ice cream! Mmm
Sweets for my ice cream!

Birthday Girls Slice!
Whole Cake !

After we had eaten everything, we had a good nose around Fortnums! The ice cream parlour shares its floor with the Christmas range so we had fun looking at Christmas trees, baubles and crackers! Well, Sainsburys has started stocking Christmas cake so why not Fortnums! Afterwards we looked at the fashion, huge confectionery ranges, chocolates, wall of Rare Marmalades, the perfumes and admired the people buying ther fruit and veg there before heading home. It was a very enjoyable weekend and I would advise everyone in London, or all those who can travel there - to visit!