Chocolate Cream Tart

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie pick was selected by Kim of Scrumptious Photography. She selected the Chocolate Cream Tart, which is a chocolate tart shell, filled with chocolate custard cream filling and topped with sweetened whipped cream. Visit Kim’s blog to see the entire recipe.

I don’t make a lot of pies and tarts, just because sometimes I don’t want to fiddle with pastry. I had good days with pastry when everything comes together nicely and other days when nothing will work. I was happy to see that this recipe used a press in the pan chocolate crust, which is usually very forgiving. The pastry presented me with no problems, so that was really encouraging. I think my crust was a little thick around the edges, but this made the crust sturdier. In places where the crust was thinner, it was very crumbly, so I’m glad that I made it a little thicker.

The filling for this is chocolate custard, where you boil milk and then whisk the milk into an egg yolk mixture. I’ve made a lot of custard lately, with last week’s bread pudding and the recent banana cream pie selections. I’m getting quite skilled at making custard, but I’ll be glad to make something else, too. The difference with this custard is that you add melted chocolate. I used dark chocolate rather than bittersweet chocolate, and it was great. I also cooled the filling quickly, rather than allowing it too cool and sit in the refrigerator too long. Last time I did that the custard had thickened to a rubbery mess. Cooling the custard quickly was a good plan, since the filling ended up being smooth and velvety.

I tasted the difference components of the tart and they were all good. The pastry is a touch bitter thanks to the cocoa powder in the dough. The filling had a good dark chocolate flavor and the whipping cream had a subtle sweetness. All of the flavors came together wonderfully. The slight bitterness of the crust is mellowed by the richness and sweetness of the other components. You can’t eat a very big piece of this tart as it is quite rich! With the exception of some parts of the crust, this tart is not delicate at all. It cut easily and even the first piece I cut was picture perfect! I usually completely mangle the first piece of pie or cake that I cut, but the first piece here came out so well that I used it in the photographs. Certainly a pleasant surprise!

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours be Dorie Greenspan, pages 352 and 353.