I think we’ve got about five punnets of raspberries from the garden in the last week (and that’s with one of the bushes being utterly rubbish). Tubfuls are going straight into the freezer, we just can’t eat them fast enough; we’re having a pretty stellar go though.
What this means in practice is that pretty much every dish I’m making just now has raspberries in it, and I take a handful every time I go passed the kitchen. It’s a tough break, but I suppose someone’s got to do it…
I’ve made raspberry iced tea, started some more raspberry gin, muddled them into drinks, had them with pancakes and spent a leisurely breakfast dipping them into Greek yoghurt. But when it came to making a dessert for Sunday dinner it needed to be stepped up a notch.
There’s something about Sunday evening dinners that requires special attention. A treat to celebrate the week that’s been, or encouragement for the week ahead? How it is described I will leave up to you, but regardless I’m just going to leave this recipe for a dark chocolate and raspberry tart here for you to do with it as you see fit.
Raspberry & Dark Chocolate Tart
I took inspiration for this tart from a picture I saw on Delicious. Magazine’s Instagram feed, but the recipe is original. Makes approximately six slices.
Ingredients
for the pastry:
140g plain flour
30g cocoa powder
80g unsalted butter
1 egg yolk
3 tbsp cold water
30g icing sugar
for the filling:
2 eggs
100ml milk (I used semi skimmed)
300ml double cream
200g dark chocolate
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 punnet of fresh raspberries
Directions
Start with the pastry. Put the flour, icing sugar, cocoa powder and butter in a large bowl and gently combine with a hand blender/wooden spoon until it’s the texture of breadcrumbs. Beat the eggs with the water separately and then stir in to the flour mixture until it all starts to come together. At this point tip it out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead for a couple of minutes until it is smooth (or be lazy like me and do your kneading in the bowl with a little extra sprinkling of flour). Wrap/cover in clingfilm and rest in the fridge for 15 minutes.
Once the pastry is chilled, take it out and roll it into a thin disc that will cover the bottom and sides of a 20cm loose-bottomed tart tin (the tin I used wasn’t loose bottomed and it cracked when I took it out, so loose-bottomed is the way to go!). Chill in the fridge again for 20 minutes.
Preheat your oven to 180ºC, with a baking sheet in the middle. Take your pastry out of the fridge, use a fork to lightly prick the pastry on the bottom of the tin - but don’t go right through, or your case will leak everywhere! - and then line your pastry case with some baking paper. Pour in baking beans (lentils or rice also work). Pop into the oven, on top of your baking sheet, and blind bake for 15 minutes. After the 15 minutes is up (or your pastry looks like it’s getting too dark) take the baking paper and beans out and then bake for a further 5 minutes. This will ensure your tart doesn’t have a soggy bottom and can retain the filling better; be careful though, it’s harder to tell if chocolate pastry is burning as the colour is darker.
Allow your pastry to cool so it is crisp; turn the oven down to 150ºC.
To make the filling, put a medium sized pan on the hob and to it add the milk, cream and sugar. Heat gently until it starts to boil, the remove from the heat and break the chocolate into it; stir gently until chocolate is fully melted. Cool slightly and then crack in your eggs and vanilla, stir until fully combined and smooth.
Add about half of your raspberries into the pastry case and pour the chocolate filling in on top. It shouldn’t be filled right to the top of the pastry or you’ll likely spill it. Place carefully back in the oven and bake for 20-30 minutes. The mixture should be set, but with a slight wobble still in the middle.
Allow to cool, then scatter with icing sugar and raspberries just before serving. Serve with a little more double cream.
