Chocolate Tart

The thing about some death by molten triple layer gooey chocolate desserts is that they can be a little...much. I mean, I love me some chocolate, but I'd rather be able to eat an entire serving and not feel ill or 10 lbs heavier afterward. In many ways, simplicity can be even more important when it comes to chocolate. A chocolate tart such as this, for example, is pure simplicity without being a heavy brick of pure decadence.


The recipe comes from Simon Hopkinson's Roast Chicken and Other Stories, which is one of those memoir-type books where the recipes aren't so much meant to represent the end-all of, say, a roast chicken. Instead, it's a pretty personal little collection, one cook's favorites. I was worried, at first, that we'd have a death by chocolate situation on our hands with this tart, but I was wrong. It's lighter than it looks, you might even be able to put away two slices if you're a super-glutton (like me). Anyway, you don't have to worry about being murdered by your food here. I wouldn't do that to you.


Chocolate Tart
From Simon Hopkinson's Roast Chicken and Other Stories

For the crust:
3/4 cup butter
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 egg yolks
2 scant cups all-purpose flour

For the chocolate filling:
3 egg yolks
2 whole eggs
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons butter
7 oz dark, buttersweed chocolate, broken into pieces

For the pastry:
Put the butter, sugar and egg yolks into the bowl of a food processor and pulse together quickly. Add the flour and blend until it forms a homogenous paste. Chill for at least 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Roll out the pastry as thinly as possible, and large enough to easily fill an 8" tart pan (use the kind with the removable bottom. Those things rock.) Transfer the dough to the tart pan and line with parchment paper. Use dried beans to weigh the paper down, and blind bake the pastry for about 25 minutes. It should be a pale buscuit color, but thorouly cooked through. Remove the tart pan and remove the beans and paper. Increase the heat to 375F.

For the filling:
Beat together vigorously the egg yolks, whole eggs and sugar in a bowl. This is best done with an electric mixer. The mixture should be very thick and fluffy. Melt the butter and sugar together in the top of a double boiler, stirring until the mixture is mooth. Pour the just-warm chocolate mixture into the egg mixture. Beat together the egg and chocolate mixture until well combined, then pour into the pastry shell. Bake in the oven for 5 minutes, remove and let cool.