Chocolate & Cherry Tart

This makes two fairly small tarts; for the first, I just laid a few cherries on the top, but for the second tart I halved some cherries and pushed them through the ganache before topping with more cherries.

Pitting cherries is messy business- the best way, I find, is to poke around the centre of the cherry with a skewer, then push through with a chopstick. If you have a metal straw, that would work best.

Recipe from Always With Butter

Chocolate & Cherry Tart

Ingredients:

For the pastry

140g unsalted butter, softened

100g caster sugar

½ tsp salt

1 egg yolk

200g plain flour

For the ganache

227g dark chocolate, broken into pieces

215g dark brown soft sugar

180ml double cream

1tsp salt

cherries, pitted

     

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/mark 4. Line two small loaf pans with baking paper.

2. In a mixing bowl or food processor, beat together the butter and sugar. Mix in the salt and egg yolk, then the flour. Once well combined, press into the bases and about 1 inch up the sides of the prepared pans. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, then place baking paper on top of the pastry and pour baking beans/raw rice on top. Bake for 15 minutes, remove the beans/rice and paper and bake for a further 15 minutes, or until the pastry is no longer moist. Leave to cool.

3. For the ganache, combine the chocolate, sugar, cream and salt in a heatproof bowl and heat over a pan of simmering water. Stir while heating until all the chocolate has melted, remove from the heat and pour into the pastry cases. Leave for 10 minutes before topping with the cherries. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours before serving.