Dark Chocolate Tart and a Bright-Eyed Snowman

My long  holiday is over. I am back to work now! I had a great break of two weeks of uninterrupted holiday, being at home, no work, just relax, eat, sleep, watch movies, listen to music and most importantly do nothing! But things happen and as usual I have a story to talk about.

As the holiday started I decided I should do a signature bake. How I got the idea of the signature bake I will tell you later as it is altogether a different story, for now let me tell you this story. I was all geared up for this new bake, thought about the flavours and how should I go about it, what will be the quantity of the ingredients etc. I kept everything ready so that after dinner I can start baking. I was making spiced bread rolls. After dinner I placed the bread roll dough in  the oven for baking and started watching a movie.  It was a very interesting Hindi movie called Phas Gaye Re Obama.  I loved the movie, if you haven’t seenit then please do, or if you have already seen it then you know what I am taking about. Anyway the timer reminded me of the bread rolls in the oven and I reluctantly went and checked. The rolls were almost done but some how I felt the inner part need little more time in the oven. So I turned off the oven and kept the rolls in it and went back to my movie. I was planning to come back in 5 minutes and take the rolls out of the oven. I watched rest of the movie and then saw another movie and finally went to bed at 3.30 AM in the morning. Next day, I woke up around midday and went to the kitchen to make something for brunch. That’s when I opened my oven and saw the poor bread rolls. They became so hard, they almost felt like rocks, which I can probably break only with a hammer. I was so disappointed. My first attempt of the signature bake was a disaster caused by negligence. In case you are wondering what happened to my bread rolls look at the last picture of this post. I bet you won’t be disappointed.

Anyway, I was not going to give up so easily so I started on my next baking project which was dark chocolate tart. This was a success. I make sure I wasn’t distracted by anything. Here goes the recipe :)

Ingredients:

For the tart base (pastry):

150 gm flour

100 gm butter

6 tbsp cocoa powder

2 tbsp sugar

1 tsp salt

water for the dough

For the dark chocolate filling:

100 gm dark chocolate (60% or more)

3-4 tbsp coconut milk (thick and creamy, from the can)

3 tbsp of cherry liquor

Sugar (optional – I don’t like very sweet chocolate so I didn’t add any but if you prefer please add sugar to your taste )

Cherries for decoration

Method:

Add all the dry ingredients together and mix well. Now slowly add little water and start making the dough. It will be a moderately soft dough. Roughly around 40-50 ml of water will be required. now wrap it on cling film and keep it in the fridge for half an hour or so. Mean while on a bain marie  melt the chocolate, add the coconut milk and mix it together. Add the cherry liquor and sugar (optional) and keep mixing until it’s a homogeneous mixture.

Take the pastry out of the fridge and roll it out evenly, big enough to fit into the pie dish with a little overhang. Cut out the extra overhang to give the pie a nice edge. Now pre-heat the oven to 220 degree C, place a baking sheet on top of the crust, fill with beans and bake in the oven for 15 minutes. Take the pie out of the oven and remove all the beans and the baking sheet and bake for another 10 minutes. Take the pie out of the oven and let it cool for 10-15 minutes. Fill the pie with the dark chocolate filling and keep it in the fridge for at least couple of hours before serving. Enjoy with a cup of tea or coffee.

OK! Now back to the bread rolls, those days it had snowed heavily and my husband was very keen on making a snowman. So, when I finished baking my chocolate tart, he took me out in the back garden and showed me this.

He had used two of my bread rolls to make the eyes of the snowman…”At least they are of some use!!” he added , when I gave him “a look”.