Friday 1 August 2008

White & Dark Chocolate Tart with Raspberries...


This was one of Jennie's contributions to the Masterchef Weekend 2008 - great flavour combination (how can you go wrong with fresh raspberries and white chocolate?) , and a wonderfully crisp, almost biscuity dark chocolate pastry shell holding the whole thing together.

This is more a recipe for the UK rather than for Italy, where the quality of the cream available is too thin to be used in the White Chocolate ganache for the filling - in practice, with Italian cream the relative lack of fat means that the tart filling flows out and all over the plate once you breach the tart shell...which is admittedly an aesthetic rather than a gastronomic point. But even so...the effect is better with better quality cream in the first place, so that the tart holds its shape right until the end.

For four individual tarts.

Ingredients: 150g Flour; 1 heaped tablespoon of Chocolate powder; 75g + 2 tablespoons of Icing Sugar; 125g Butter (frozen); approx 30 ml Cold Water; 175g White Chocolate; 200 ml Double Cream; 400g Fresh Raspberries; juice of half a Lemon.

Method:

1. Make the Dark Chocolate Pastry: Using the grater disc on the food processor, grate the frozen Butter into the processor bowl; add the Flour, Chocolate Powder and 75g of Icing Sugar and process all together for about fifteen seconds; then, as the machine is still going, carefully add the Cold Water in small amounts until the whole mixture has homogenised into one ball (as soon as it has, stop adding water immediately). Wrap this pastry in clingfilm, and refrigerate for at least half an hour (or as long as overnight).

2. Make the White Chocolate filling: Break the White Chocolate into small pieces, and place in a medium sized mixing bowl; heat the Cream until almost at boiling point, then pour it over the chocolate pieces; leave to stand for a minute, and then stir the now-melted Chocolate and the Cream together until thoroughly combined. Leave to cool.

3. Roll out the pastry and use it to line 4 greased (or Trennwaxed) individual tart tins; prick the bases and bake blind in a 190 degree C oven (10 minutes with the baking weights in the shells, and a further 10 after they have come out - this should give you thoroughly cooked, beautifully crisp shells). Remove these from the oven and set aside until needed.

4. Make a Raspberry coulis using 200g of the Raspberries, the Lemon juice and the remaining 2 tablespoons of Icing Sugar - blend all together in a liquidizer, and then work through a fine sieve to give a even, velvety texture.

5. To assemble the tarts, briefly whisk the White Chocolate mixture with an electric beater (this lightens the mixture) and then divide it between the dark chocolate shells. Arrange the remaining raspberries over the top of the tarts. Make a pool of coulis in the centre of each of the plates and arrange a finished tart in the centre of each pool. For decorative effect, you can dust the surface of the tart either with a little more Icing Sugar or a little more Chocolate Powder - entirely as you prefer.

Serve.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Don't give up on using Italian cream for this. Just reduce the quantity from 200ml to 150ml. Italian cream is usually 30% fat, which will whip - but only just. Double cream may have as much as 48% fat. 150ml of 30% cream will have more or less the same amount of water in it as 200ml of 48% cream. If you use more than 150ml of Italian cream it will make the ganache too runny.