Chocolate lemon tart

Lemon and chocolate is not the first combination that you think of. It's normally chocolate and orange, chocolate and raspberries or strawberries. But, dark chocolate does neutralise the overpowering tanginess from the lemon in my opinion. This is a very straightforward recipe, so I hope you will have fun making this. 

Ingredients 

(pastry)

• 175g plain flour
• 100g unsalted butter
• 30g icing sugar
• 1 large egg yolk
• 1 tbsp cold water (optional)

Lemon filling

• 3 lemons
• 100ml double cream
• 4 large eggs
• 160g caster sugar
• 10g dark chocolate chips or finely chopped chocolate

Chocolate filling and truffles

• 150g dark chocolate
• 130ml double cream
• 40g caster sugar or muscovado sugar

1. Pre-heat oven to 200 degrees C
2. Mix butter, icing sugar and flour together until the mixture reaches breadcrumb consistency, do it by hand or mixer, easier by mixer, but I don't have one, it's also easily done with your hand. Just use the tips of your fingers to rub the ingredients together 
3. Add in egg yolk and mix again, knead the dough until it is smooth, but do not over knead (use as little water as possible to get the smooth consistency)
4. Roll out pastry between two cling films or on a lightly floured surface to prevent sticking to table and rolling pin, try to get the pastry thin. I prefer the floured surface method
5. Put pastry into tart tin, this is a very nice pastry to work with, if you get a hole in the pastry, simply rip off some pastry from the edge and fill up the hole
6. Use a fork to make some holes on the bottom of the pastry to prevent it from rising
7. (Optional: chill the pastry in the fridge for 20-30 minutes)
8. Cover the pastry with baking parchment and fill inside with baking beans, try to get some baking beans on the side and cover the middle entirely, this will prevent the pastry from collapsing from the side and rising from the bottom. Also, the baking beans will distribute the heat evenly across the bottom of pastry
9. Blind bake for 15 minutes
10. Take out pastry and trim off the edges with a sharp knife, put it back in the oven for another 15-20 minutes, or until the bottom of pastry is firm and dry
11. Remove baking beans
12. Bake for another 10-15 minutes at 200 degrees C, the inside of the tart should start to turn golden 
13. Take tart out of oven to cool down to room temperature
14. Meanwhile, prepare lemon filling and switch oven down to 180 degrees C
15. Mix finely grated lemon rind and juice from 3 whole lemons, eggs, caster sugar and cream together until it forms a smooth mixture. Now sprinkle in the chocolate chips and mix it with filling (Alternatively you can try and see if you can decorate some pattern of chocolate, problem is it will melt and lose some of it shape
16. Fill up the cooled down pastry and bake at 180 degrees C for 30-35 minutes
17. Take it out of the oven and cool down to room temperature
18. Once the lemon filling has cooled down, prepare chocolate filling, the is essentially a chocolate ganache, heat double cream with caster sugar until boiling and remove from heat for 2 minutes to cool down
19. Pour hot cream into dark chocolate and mix with spoon until it is all melted and shiny
20. Pour half of it over the lemon filling and leave the rest at room temperature to cool down, then put it with a cling film over the top into the fridge overnight
21. Use a metal tsp to scoop out chocolate ganache and roll into a ball and dust with coco powder and decorate the top of the tart
22. Dust top with a bit of lemon rind and icing sugar

Finished! It takes a bit of time, but it is VERY easy to make!

TAKE CARE WITH THE FOLLOWING:

• Make sure the bottom of pastry is dry before you take away the baking beans, or it will rise once you take them away 
• Once you have baked the filling for 25 minutes, start to observe the filling as if it over bakes, the filling will start to shrink away from the pastry on the side
• Orange does go very well with chocolate as many of you would know, so, if you do use orange, use orange juice from 1 orange only, but use the orange zest from 2 whole oranges instead, if you use more orange juice than this, the filling will get very very wet, use the zest to bring out the flavour