With my birthday coming up in less than two weeks, I couldn’t prevent myself from going back in time and to a place of the past lately. It felt a bit like one of these flashbacks you only see in films, where the character’s back somewhere, at a particular moment of his or her life, feeling, hearing, smelling and seeing what is left of a golden age…
The afternoons spent cooking with my little brother and my grandma, making a mess of the kitchen, struggling to follow a damn recipe, playing the music we loved, playing silly, playing happy, tasting the melted chocolate – just because – and above all, enjoying some precious hours together.
So here’s one of the remnants of some golden hours – the chocolate and lemon curd tart!
- * 250g flour
- * 2 tbsp. sugar-free cocoa powder
- * 120g icing sugar
- * 200g cold butter
- * 2 egg yolks
- * 240g sugar
- * zests of 2 lemons
- *120g butter
- * 3 eggs
- * 150g lemon juice
- * 90g dark chocolate
- * 10g butter
- * 90g crème fraîche
- Blend the flour, the cocoa powder, the icing sugar and the butter in a bowl.
- Add the egg yolks and stir.
- Shape a ball from the pastry, wrap it clingfilm and leave it in the fridge for 1 hour.
- After an hour, fill the tart tins and put them back in the fridge for half an hour.
- 10 minutes before the end of that half hour, preheat the over at 180°.
- Prick the bottoms of the tarts with a fork, cover them with baking paper and fill them with chickpeas or other dried pulses, and bake for 15 min at 180°.
- Let the tarts cool.
- First mix the sugar with the lemon zests.
- Then add the butter, the eggs and the lemon juice.
- Fill in scalded jars with the mixture.
- Once cooled, the lemon curd can be kept in the fridge for up to a month.
- Cook the chocolate, the butter and the crème fraîche and let it melt.
- On the chocolate sweet shortcrust pastry-tarts, add a first layer of lemon curd and a second layer of chocolate ganache.
- Smooth the surface with a spatula.
- Dip a fork in the rest of the lemon curd and draw filaments on the top of tarts (moving the fork back and forth on top of the tart).
- Put the tarts in the fridge and let them cool completely before enjoying!
☆ BONUS – Little Jars of Chocolate & Lemon cream ☆
Should you have some lemon curd and chocolate ganache left, you can very well make little jars of chocolate and lemon cream like the ones presented below.
