My Tuesday with Dorie: Soft Chocolate, Raspberry and Cherry Tart

Welcome everyone from TWD, new readers and of course my MIH fans! I am excited to get to share with you, my pick for Tuesdays with Dorie! Soft Chocolate, Raspberry and Cherry Tart on page 354 of Baking From My Home To Yours. I know you all will want this recipe, so I'll get right to that first. =) (sorry if blogger messes up the format of the recipe)

Soft Chocolate and Raspberry Tart
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After this tart has baked and cooled just a little the chocolate filling take on the lovable characteristics of pudding, becoming soft and creamy and seductively slithery, and the flavor of the berried intensifies. I use a mixture of dark and milk chocolates because I think a milder blend is better with berries. If you prefer, you can make it with all dark chocolate; using all milk chocolate would set the balance askew.

3 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

2 ounces premium-quality milk chocolate, finely chopped

1/2 cup heavy cream

1/2 stick (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces

1 1/2 tablespoons sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1 large egg yolk, at room temperature

1 cup (6-ounce container) fresh raspberries

1 9-inch tart shell made with Sweet Tart Dough with Nuts (page 444 & below), fully baked and cooled

Getting Ready: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Put the tart pan on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silicone mat.

Set a heatproof bowl over a pan of gently simmering water, add the bittersweet and milk chocolates and heat, stirring occasionally until the are melted. Remove the bowl from the heat.

Meanwhile, bring the cream, and butter just to a boil. Pour the cream-butter mixture over the chocolate and let it stand for 30 seconds. Working with a whisk or a rubber spatula, gently stir the liquid into the chocolate-start stirring in the center of the bowl and work your way out in ever-widening circles. When the mixture is smooth, stir in the sugar, then the eggs and finally the yolk. Rap the bowl against the counter to break any bubbles that might have formed.

Scatter the berries over the bottom of the crust, then pour the chocolate ganache over them.

Bake the tart for about 30 minutes-the filling should not jiggle if you tap the pan and a knife inserted into the center of the tart should come out a little streaky. Transfer the tart pan to a rack and cool to room temperature before serving.

Makes 8 servings

Serving: There are some people who like this tart ever so slightly warm, but the flavor and texture don't really come into their own until the tart is cooled to room temperature. Serve it cold and it will lose its lovely creaminess. Whatever temperature ends up being your favorite, do serve the tart with whipped cream or creme fraiche.

Storing: This tart is best served the day it is made. In fact, it's really best just a few hours out of the oven, is you can swing that.

Playing Around: Try the tart with blackberries or blueberries, but no with strawberries-they're too watery. The tart is also good with cherries, either fresh or bottles small cherries packed in heavy syrup. I like to use slightly sour griottes (French cherries) or amarene (Italian cherries). Both are available at specialty store. If you use cherries in syrup, drain them and pat dry before use.

Sweet Tart Dough
Makes enough for one 9-inch crust

In French, this dough is called pâte sablée because it is buttery, tender and sandy (that's what sablée means). It's much like shortbread, and it's ideal for filling with fruit, custard or chocolate.

The simplest way to make a tart shell with this dough is to press it into the pan. You can roll out the dough, but the high proportion of butter to flour and the inclusion of confectioners' sugar makes it finicky to roll. I always press it into the pan, but if you want to roll it, I suggest you do so between sheets of plastic wrap or wax paper or inside a rolling slipcover (see page 491 of the book).

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick plus 1 tablespoon (9 tablespoons)
very cold (or frozen) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 large egg yolk

Put the flour, confectioners' sugar and salt in a food processor and pulse a couple of times to combine. Scatter the pieces of butter over the dry ingredients and pulse until the butter is coarsely cut in?you should have some pieces the size of oatmeal flakes and some the size of peas. Stir the yolk, just to break it up, and add it a little at a time, pulsing after each addition. When the egg is in, process in long pulses?about 10 seconds each?until the dough, which will look granular soon after the egg is added, forms clumps and curds. Just before you reach this stage, the sound of the machine working the dough will change?heads up. Turn the dough out onto a work surface and, very lightly and sparingly, knead the dough just to incorporate any dry ingredients that might have escaped mixing.

To press the dough into the pan: Butter a 9-inch fluted tart pan with a removable bottom. Press the dough evenly over the bottom and up the sides of the pan, using all but one little piece of dough, which you should save in the refrigerator to patch any cracks after the crust is baked. Don't be too heavy-handed?press the crust in so that the edges of the pieces cling to one another, but not so hard that the crust loses its crumbly texture. Freeze the crust for at least 30 minutes, preferably longer, before baking.

To partially or fully bake the crust: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Butter the shiny side of a piece of aluminum foil and fit the foil, buttered side down, tightly against the crust. (Since you froze the crust, you can bake it without weights.) Put the tart pan on a baking sheet and bake the crust for 25 minutes. Carefully remove the foil. If the crust has puffed, press it down gently with the back of a spoon. For a partially baked crust, patch the crust if necessary, then transfer the crust to a cooling rack (keep it in its pan).

To fully bake the crust: Bake for another 8 minutes or so, or until it is firm and golden brown. (I dislike lightly baked crusts, so I often keep the crust in the oven just a little longer. If you do that, just make sure to keep a close eye on the crust's progress?it can go from golden to way too dark in a flash.) Transfer the tart pan to a rack and cool the crust to room temperature before filling.

To patch a partially or fully baked crust, if necessary: If there are any cracks in the baked crust, patch them with some of the reserved raw dough as soon as you remove the foil. Slice off a thin piece of the dough, place it over the crack, moisten the edges and very gently smooth the edges into the baked crust. If the tart will not be baked again with its filling, bake for another 2 minutes or so, just to take the rawness off the patch.

Sweet Tart Dough with Nuts: This dough has a slightly more assertive flavor than Sweet Tart Dough above, but you can use the two interchangeably. For the nut dough, reduce the amount of flour to 1-1/4 cups and add 1/4 cup finely ground almonds (or walnuts, pecans or pistachios).

Storing: Well wrapped, the dough can be kept in the refrigerator for up to 5 days or frozen for up to 2 months. While the fully baked crust can be packed airtight and frozen for up to 2 months, I prefer to freeze the unbaked crust in the pan and bake it directly from the freezer?it has a fresher flavor. Just add about 5 minutes to the baking time.
See more at "Mommy? I"m Hungry!".


I had gone through her book literally page to page to figure out which recipes hadn't been picked yet. Then I had to find one that would be great for Mr.'s Birthday (the 15th). So I tossed out a few recipes for him to decide from and would you believe he picked Berry Cobbler?! Huh?? No, I wanted something something a little fancier for my TWD pick and his birthday so talked him into this tart. haha! (Hopefully the cobbler will be picked soon). Knowing most of everyone here does not like raspberries, I decided to do a half and half tart. Dorie mentions using cherries instead and I knew they'd go for that!

I know fresh raspberries are not cheap right now (my 6 oz was $3.99 at Vons), but I really wanted to use fresh over frozen mushy ones. I had to time this with Mr.'s birthday so I sucked it up and payed that the day before I made the tart. Hey! It's a special week, why not?

Anyways, I made mine half cherries and half raspberries. I really wanted to try both flavors. Well guess what flavor they all chose to eat? Raspberry! Shocker! lol. I really loved the cherry in it, the raspberry was very raspberry (and those seeds!)...but it was a delicious tart overall and we all liked it. I added some whipped cream and my first ever chocolate curls (if you can call them that) to it, so I had to keep it in the fridge, giving the tart a more denser thicker ganache. Mmm!

Ever since I heard of Dorie Greenspan and her book, I was immediately in ? with it, the way she writes and "talks" you through the directions as if she's right there guiding you (she's also very personable "in person" too, online... I have spoken with her a few times on Facebook, my kids got a huge kick out of me speaking to an author of a baking book! She's just wonderful!). I ordered a copy of it and decided to join the TWD baking group. July 22, 2008 was my first TWD recipe, Cherry Rhubarb Cobbler. Since then I have baked quite a lot of treats some great ones, and some that just did not turn out for me. It's great baking a long with others because there are recipes I would never had tried otherwise, and I'm glad I did. Through Dorie, I have overcome my pie crust woes, and have now found my tried and true crust recipes from her book!

A few of my Dorie favorites so far have been: French Pear Tart, Chocolate Pudding, Four Star Chocolate Bread Pudding, Classic Banana Bundt Cake, Sweet Potato Biscuits,Toasted Coconut Cream Tart, and her Pie/Tart Crusts.
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Enjoy! I hope to be able to visit the TWDers to see their tarts and thank them for baking along with me! The group is so large, so it may take a few days. =) (I had to type out the recipe, so if I messed up somewhere please let me know)