Thursday, December 3, 2009

Recipe: Choc-Cherry Tart

In my pursuit to perfect some decadent primal recipes, ready to whip up for family and friends at Christmas, I took advantage of the opportunity to have my brother over for dinner in order to get feedback from someone outside of the sugar- and gluten-free experience. However, the frequency of consumption made snapping photos difficult, so when I make these tarts again (and I certainly will, given their response!), I will take the time to snap some nicer shots. If you make a batch of your own, I'd love to see the outcome!

Choc-Cherry Tart


Ingredients:

Crust

1 cup almond flour
1 egg
1 dash vanilla essence or 1/4t ground vanilla pods
1T butter
1/2t cinnamon
Optional - enough sugar substitute to sweeten crust

Filling

(I'm listing the amounts I used, but I had extra filling so I cooked the excess in ramekins - worked very well too! Making one large tart may require the whole amount of filling...)

400g 100% cacao buttons (or cocoa mixed with coconut oil if preferred)
250g butter
3 whole eggs
5 egg yolks
200g cherries, pitted
Optional - enough sugar substitute to sweeten as desired

Note - if you use a lighter form of chocolate, such as 90% Lindtt dark chocolate, you may need to decrease the amount of butter you use to balance the fat amounts.


Method:

Crust

Preheat oven to 150°C. Prepare a pie pan or muffin tray.

Combine all ingredients into a moist ball of dough.

Press dough into pan to make a thin but consistent crust density.

Place in oven until dough becomes a light golden-brown. (Note - if you notice the butter in the crust bubbling too much, turn down your oven slightly, as you want the moisture to stay bound in the almond flour)



Filling

Melt chocolate and butter, and combine well.

In a separate bowl, whisk eggs, yolk, and sweetener until fluffy.

Fold chocolate mixture into eggs gently.

Place cherries along the bottom of the tart shell



Gently pour the chocolate over the cherries until just covered. The mixture will rise a little during cooking. The filling mixture is as dark as the chocolate, but a thin layer of lighter, frothy mix may float to the top - quite a nice effect since the top of the tart then matches the colour of the base, and heightens the 'surprise' of the filling. But your mixture may not end up as frothy - it will depend on the quality of the eggs you use. I use organic, pastured eggs that do wonderful things - as Joel Salatin says, they express the true essence of egg :)



Place in oven until mixture has risen and bounces back when touched in the centre. It took around 30 minutes for me, but a large tart would take at least 45 minutes, at a guess.

Serve warm or at room temperature, with cream.

This batch made 6 muffin-sized tarts, plus three filled ramekins. It should be enough to fill a large pie dish.



Well, it certainly isn't light on calories, but the beau and my brother adored these little tartlettes! They gushed over the chocolaty insides and the joy of discovering whole cherries. I made six tarts with crusts, and three 'souffles' in ramekins, and the beau is steadily making his way through them - they're his current choice for breakfasts! As I am living as a carnivore at the moment, I could only watch and ask questions, but hopefully I'll be able to enjoy this delight on occasion in the future. Maybe it can be my Christmas treat!

6 comments:

Grok said...

Well done! These sound great.

"400g 100% cacao" can that be correct? Sound good, but that's a huge amount of cacao! LOL Almost 1/2 KG?

Jezwyn said...

Sure is! Doesn't melt down to much. I actually didn't have 400g on hand, so the balance of choc to butter was a bit off - not noticeable in the tarts with a crust though.

Don't forget, this made 9 large serves, or one large pie you could slice quite thinly - even my muffin-sized tarts would have had a max of 36g cacao, which isn't that much for a decadent dessert.

E van Abeelen said...

those look amazing! :-)

I tried to make these this morning, but mine didn't turn out quite as nice to look at (the taste was fine though ;-) )

I was wondering, in the recipe you say 5 egg yokes, shouldn't that be egg whites? ( i didn't have enough egg at home, so i used 5 whole eggs instead)
As far as i know egg white turns fluffy, but egg yokes do not.
Just a thought

Eva

Jezwyn said...

Haha, thanks for the comment Eva! What went wrong with the appearance of yours?

Nope, definitely egg yolks, since you want the chocolate layer to be thick and fudgey. Too much egg white will result in a foamy layer. You need to whip the yolks until 'fluffy' so that the choc/butter mix will combine with them thoroughly.

Cheers, and better luck next batch!

Aeruynh said...

Hey Jezwyn :)

I'm gonna make this into a whole tart (because I forgot to bring my muffintrayes back last time I was home, lol.)

But I was wondering about the cocoa - You say 100% - you really do mean the pure cocoa mass that has only been separated from the cocoa butter, right? The one you can also get as a powder?

If so - why do you use butter instead of cocoa butter? Is it a taste thing?

Was at the organic food store yesterday and actually found a 400 gram bag of pure cocoa mass - perfect :D

Ill be celebrating my birthday on saturday, so I'm making preparations so that I have everything. It'll be served to sugar eaters though - how much sweetener do you actually use? just taste your way? Right now I have Xylitol and stevia available - but Im not sure how much to use.

Thanks!

Jezwyn said...

Pure cacao mass is all I use. I don't have access to cocoa butter.

Sweetener is definitely a test-as-you-go thing, especially since we all use different sweeteners.