Chocolate Tart - Another 110 Year Old Recipe!

I had to try this one too from the ancient cookbook (Amie Monro's The Practical Australian Cookery).  I've done a bit of tinkering, added some bits, left out some bits and made the recipe clearer, I hope.  Some things Amie just expects us to know: 'Return to oven to set whites'; no temperature, no timing.  I wonder if she just had a wood-fired oven back in the day?  Ah, I've just Googled it - Aussies generally didn't have electric ovens till the late 1920s!

Post Apocalyptic floods here, we've had our roof and gutters repaired and two whirlybirds put on the roof.  So everything is drying out now, thank goodness.  What I really hated was the awful burning smell which wet insulation gives off.  It has taken weeks for the smell to die down/off.  Yuck!  And now we are having our usual hot Indian summer (are you allowed to say that these days?) days before we get winter.  Well, most people wouldn't even call it winter.  Average daytime temp in winter is 21C/71F!  The best time of year.

old-fashioned chocolate tart ready to eat

Serves 6:

ingredients:

225g./8 oz shortcrust pastry (see Notes below)

2-3 Tbs of Nutella or similar choc-hazelnut spread

45g./1.5 oz butter

30g./1 (heaped) oz plain flour

250 mL/8.5 fl oz milk - any sort but not low-fat

2 large eggs, separated into whites and yolks

60g./2.2 oz (good) milk chocolate - like Lindt - grated or blitzed in a food processor

30g./1 heaped oz of caster sugar

a couple of dashes of ground cinnamon

60g./2.2 oz pecans, toasted and chopped roughly

extra chocolate, grated - for bling on top

Method:

First grab a pie dish (c. 23cm/9" diameter), grease it with butter and line with the pastry sheet

Prick the base several times with a fork, and whack it into a hot oven (220C/425F) for fifteen minutes

Let it cool while you make the filling: Melt the butter on a low heat, whisk in the flour off the heat, then keep whisking while you cook out the flour for two minutes

Pour in the milk, and whisk away till boiling

Turn down the heat to low-ish, and whisk in the chocolate, sugar and egg yolks

Cook out the mixture till it thickens (without boiling), then leave aside to cool down

Spread the Nutella/hazelnut paste over the pastry base

Pour/spoon the cooled mixture into the baked pastry shell

Scatter the toasted pecans and dashes of cinnamon over the chocolate mixture 

Make the meringue by beating the egg whites with 100g./3.5 oz of caster sugar till firm, stiff peaks form

Spread it gently over the pie filling, and now bake at 180C/360F for around ten minutes or till lightly golden-brown

When cool, throw on the extra grated chocolate over the meringue

Serve with whipped cream, if feeling decadent

This was not a very sweet pie, probably because I used 70% dark chocolate.  And I confess the texture was a bit odd for this 21st century cook, but it was interesting to make (a béchamel with chocolate?  I mean, really?) and it tasted - what? - interesting, chocolatey, dessert-like ...  I'd like to make it again, but with milk chocolate (and more of it) and coconut milk.  Yep a Bounty kind of tart :-)  

Notes:

I had planned to make the pastry, but ... Time got away from me, so I thawed out a sheet of frozen.  Hit the internet for recipes if you fancy making your own. (It's darned easy if you use your food processor)  

I used Lindt spread but Nutella is fine; and I also used Lindt 70% dark chocolate for the filling - a mistake I think.  Use milk chocolate!

Use nut milk, oat milk, rice milk, whatever.  No, scrap the rice milk - you need fat!  Mm, I'd love to try coconut milk here ... 

ingredients gathered 

bake the crust @ 220C/425F for 15 mins.

slather the spread over the baked pastry base

pile on the meringue over the chocolate filling

just lightly baked till golden-brown (ish)

sprinkle on the grated chocolate

get ready to enjoy

© Sherry M.

that used to be a concrete walking path pre-flood!