Chocolate and Pear Tarts

These tarts have the wow factor both visually and in terms of taste, they are utterly delicious. I first made these when I went all out on a Friday Night, cooking my partner a 3 course dinner at home and these were my showcase dessert. I was a little apprehensive of whether or not they would work and how they would turn out. I always make my own pastry but you can buy very nice tart cases and rather inexpensively from supermarkets so if you want to save around half of the time in takes to make these tarts then that's what I advise you do. I like to go all out with decoration when I bake as you may have already guessed but of course you can decorate these tarts as you wish. I sprinkle mine with freese dried raspberrries as they stand out beautifully against the dark chocolate filling and some sliced pears . To finish I topped off with a couple of Chocolate Matchsticks as I happened to have some left over in the cupboard, but as I say its up to you.

Chocolate & Pear Tarts

Makes 4 Tarts

Pastry:

225g Plain Flour

175g Butter

45g Icing Sugar

1 large egg, beaten

Filling:

300g dark chocolate

200g Double cream

1 small tin of pears in juice

Freeze Dried Raspberries

White Chocolate Shavings

• To begin with, make the pastry. Preheat the oven to 190 oc and prepare your tart cases: lightly grease them and set them to one side.
• Measure the flour and butter into a food processor and blend until resembles bread crumbs. Add the icing sugar and egg until a combined ball.
• Roll out on a floured surface to a 2mm thickness.
• Cut into 4 equal rectangles and lower over the tart tins, or over just the one if you are making one big one.
• Press the pasty into the tin and cut off the pastry which hangs over the side. Once you have done this, pop them in the oven for 20 minutes until golden.
• In a large saucepan heat the cream over a medium heat until it starts to boil.
• While you wait break the chocolate into squares in a mixing bowl. Once the cream has been brought to the boil pour it in with the chocolate, immediately start to stir, you are looking for the cream to melt all of the chocolate. Once you have done this set the filling to once side.
• When your tarts are ready to be taken out of the oven, take out of the tart cases and pop them onto a cooling rack to cool down completely.
• To prepare the pears, drain the juice from the pan and finely slice the pears. They usually come in halves. I would recommend slicing 8 of the pear halves in total.
• Once the pastry is cool, layer the slice pears into the cases coming no further than halfway.
• Poor the chocolate on top then cool in the fridge until the chocolate is completely set, this will take about 2 hours in total.

• Once the tarts have set you can decorate them, I slice more of the pears and fan several out on top, grate some white chocolate, scatter freeze dried raspberries and pop a truffle on top, however on this occasion I used Matchmakers to finish!

Let me know what you came up with if you had a go at this recipe! Good luck!