When people ask me what I love to bake most (or eat, it’s the same in this case), the answer is real simple - tarts! Desserts with a short crust base and a filling, any filling really, from pastry cream topped with fresh fruit, through chocolate or banana creamy fillings and even the simplest ones (a few weeks ago I’ve even made pear and ginger jam filled tartlets - wonderful!) can make me truly happy.

This time I chose a recipe by Carine Goren, a very talented Israeli pastry chef, whom I’ve mentioned at least once before. “Sweet Secrets”, a great cookbook she published a few years back, brought baking to the people. I mean this is the first book I’ve seen until then that was perfect in every way - its beautiful design, the stunning and mouth-watering photos it was rich with (I wonder how come not all the books today come out with such wonderful photography! For me it’s basics in a cookbook), and the most important thing - the clarity and simplicity with which all the recipes were written. You could really tell that’s she truly wants everybody to succeed in making her recipes. And succeed we did, I think that she’s the most praised book writer in Israel in the sense of the recipes’ quality.

And so is this tart. I haven’t yet met the persons that didn’t LOVE this tart and enjoyed every second of its first bite.  Using a good quality chocolate (I use Callebaut with 53% cocoa solids) will make the experience even greater.
I really enjoy giving sweet gifts to my friends, and this tart was made for Neta, a very good friend of ours, when she gave birth to little Noa. She really needed this sweet comfort after a long and not so easy childbirth.

Some notes and tips about this tart:

* The 2 remaining egg whites can be kept for a later use. Put them in a cup, cover with plastic wrap, write how many whites are in there (these things tend to be forgotten) and today’s date, and freeze them. They are kept great for 3-4 months, longer than that I haven’t tried.

* Short crust is not a great delight to roll out, it tends to stick to the surface it’s on, if not carefully floured, and too much flour doesn’t do it good as well. You have to options here:
1. The pretty one - roll it out. The method I find least painful is between two plastic wrap sheets, and the the rolling out part and moving it to the pan part get a lot easier.
2. The less pretty - use your hands. You can skip the rolling part and use your hands to place crust in the pan. Messier and less pretty, but it works. I use option 1 most of the times, and turn to option 2 when I feel really lazy.

* The crust’s margins are an important source of the tart’s beauty, in my eyes. So pay attention to them - and make sure that they are even throughout the whole tart, and make them quite thick (that also depends on the thickness of the crust you rolled out). If you need a little more dough for a corner there, look carfully and you’ll be able to find another corner to pinch from.

* Short crusts are sometimes baked apart from the filling - fully or partially, and in that case the filling is added to the crust and they are baked together for some more time. This process is called “blind baking“.

* Have you ever blind baked a crust and the base puffed up or the margins simply crashed into the bottom of the crust? 3 simple steps to solve these problems:
1. Make holes with a fork on the crust, after moving it to the pan.
2. Right after that place the pan with the crust in it in the freezer for 10 minutes.
3. Before baking, place a baking sheet on top of the dough and scatter “baking weights” on it - you can use relatively heavy legumes (like beans or chickpeas). The weights serve a double purpose here - they also press the crust down and prevent it from inflating, and also push the margins aside and prevent them from falling. See the picture below to have a feeling of how dense should the weights be.

* The tips about short crust I’ve given in my previous post are also valid here, so take a look.

Chocolate Tart / Carine Goren
For a 10 inch (26 cm) tart pan + 1 tartlet

Ingredients:
For the crust:
300 gr (2 packed cups) flour
200 gr butter, soft
100 gr powdered sugar
1 egg
10 gr vanillated sugar (can be replaced with 1 tsp of vanilla essence)

For the filling:
250 gr bitersweet chocolate
150 gr butter
2 eggs
2 egg yolks
50 gr (1/4 cup) sugar
a pinch of salt

Make the crust:
1. Process butter and sugar in the mixer until creamy.
2. Add in the egg and 1/4 amount of the flour, until smooth. Add in the rest of the flour and process only until a dough is formed (careful, too lenghty processing will harm the texture). Gather the dough with your hands, form a flat circle, wrap it with plastic wrap and chill for 2 hours, until the dough is cold and stiff.
3. Roll out the dough (see tips) to a circle a bit bigger than the pan’s size. It’s supposed to be about 0.5 cm thick. Place the dough in the pan and press the dough so it will fit perfectly in the pan. Here’s the place to give those margins some TLC, they’ll pay it back bigtime.
4. Make holes in the dough using a fork (see tips) and then freeze it for 10 minutes.
5. Take out of the freezer and scatter the baking weights (see tips).
6. Bake for about 15 minutes in a 350F(180C) preheated oven, until the margins begin to become golden. Remove the weights and allow the bottom to bake as well, until it becomes slightly golden.

Meanwhile, prepare the filling:
1. Melt together chocolate, butter and salt. If you’re doing it in the microwave, make sure to do it in 30 seconds intervals, and stir between each one, in order to prevent the chocolate from burning.
2. In the mixer beat together eggs, egg yolks and sugar for 5 minutes, at high speed., until light in color and fluffy in texture.
3. Gently fold the egg mixture into the chocolate mixture, until well blended. Pour over the baked crust. Bake together for about 20 minutes, or until the filling slightly cracks, is bearly stable and soft to touch.

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