I too had a question about the size of the tart pan for this recipe. Since it wasn't mentioned, I used a standard 10" pan. I filled the tart as full as it would go and ended up with about 1 1/2 cups extra filling. The tart almost overflowed when it puffed up but eventually settled down. I put the extra filling in a little ramekin and baked it as a sort of soufflé. Next time I'll use a 12" tart pan.
Thank you for another superb recipe. Just a note about the crust. When I was baking for local restaurants, I didn’t have time for fiddling with rolling out dough and pie weights. At the time I was using Lindsey Shere’s recipe (Chez Panisse Dessert book), a cup of flour to a stick of butter, which is a bit more fragile but still had minimal shrinkage during blind baking.
I put all of the ingredients in the food processor, pulse until it is just coming together. I dump this in the tart pan and put the dough in by hand, as thinly as possible. It then goes in the fridge for at least two hours and then is docked and popped into a 425F oven, no pie weights. I used the same method for this tart and there was almost no shrinkage and a beautiful, even colour.
I also found the quantity of filling would have been better suited to a 10” tart pan, but no problem, made some tartlets with the left over. I so enjoy the precision of your recipes and dedication to metric - it makes baking SO much easier! (PS - I still like to weigh liquids, sorry!)
Thanks for this David, and for all the recipes you have shared over the years. I’d like to make this for a large family gathering but that would mean I would have to prepare it either in advance and freeze it, or keep it for three days or so before serving. Do you think it would freeze, or should I choose a different recipe if I can’t make it fresh?
I had quite a few issues with the recipe, and I consider myself a pretty seasoned baker. First, the crust became too warm while I was rolling it out, so it stuck to the bottom parchment. I rolled it to 13" diameter, so I don't think I was rolling it too thin . . . but after re-chilling it and trying again, I was able to make it work after quite a few patches. Second, I had WAY too much filling, as others have said. I don't think I over-whipped, as I got it to soft peaks - maybe I was too concerned about deflation and didn't integrate the chocolate enough? Third, what do you do with leftovers - leave them at room temperature? I refrigerated mine, and they became very hard . . . I had to leave it out to soften. Still tasty, though!
I didn't have those issues (I showed the dough before and after rolling) My filling deflated when I mixed it enough so that it fit in the pan. Here are the original proportions:
Tart Dough: 150g flour, 100g butter, pinch of salt, 75g sugar, 1 egg
Filling: 150 g dark chocolate, 1 egg, 2 egg yolks, 30g sugar, 100g butter
So if you want to try it again, using the chef's proportions in his cookbook (which says "serves 4" you can. (He says to bake it in a 20cm tart pan.)
I made this yesterday and everyone loved it. I had no problem rolling out the dough. I ended up with too much filling. I am guessing that I over whipped the eggs. I whipped them for 5 exactly minutes. Next time I will use a lower speed and pay closer attention. I baked the extra filling and I was thinking that it would be dessert tonight but my husband ate it for breakfast this morning!
What a fascinating post. The description of your method for converting the recipe for the rest of us was very interesting. Incidentally, I was looking for a special restaurant to take my partner to for his birthday a few weeks ago. He is a man and I am a woman. I was about to book Ambroisie, a major treat, when I was one online review said that they handed a guest menu with no prices to the woman they were with, despite the woman being the host and having her name on the booking. For that reason I did not book there. We are going to Pierre Gagnaire instead - let's hope they don't do the same. Maybe it's just old-fashioned-ness as you suggest, but these days I consider it a faute de service, if you can call it that. It happened to me in a Paris restaurant a few years and left a sour enough taste that I never went back. Then it happened again at a Michelin-starred restaurant near Avignon that I took my husband to (again, my treat). The restaurant had a young chef and young staff so I was flabbergasted at such an outdated gesture in 2022. What hotel school is currently teaching 18 year-olds that women should always get a menu without prices? My husband urged me to consider it a momentary error rather than an insult to me as a full participant in 21st century society (which is how it feels). For his sake I tried to forget about it ; the meal did indeed turn out to be delicious and the rest of the service charming. However it still irks me that in a country like France, which prides itself on being the cradle of human rights and equality, this practice seems to be more than an occasional encounter for the 50% of us who happen to be women.
Happy baking to those who're just here for the recipe!
To me, I agree that it's an outdated/antiquated habit. A (female) friend, who is a highly-regarded chef (in the US), took me to a 3-star restaurant in Paris and told them in advance to give me the menu without the prices, as she was taking me to dinner, which worked.
A while back I was in Australia with cooking legend Diana Kennedy and when they served her first, she ranted that she hated that custom. I mentioned something about that habit of serving women first on Twitter at the time, as it might be outdated, and a lot of people (including women) disagreed. My pet peeve is when I'm with a woman and they order the wine, when the server gives it to me to taste. It's particularly odd when the woman I'm dining with is a wine expert or sommelier, which has happened to me more than once...
This looks and sounds so delicious. I am one of those people who avoids the “death by chocolate “ desserts, it’s just too much chocolate for me. This sounds so good, thanks for sharing.
As much as I love chocolate, I avoid the "death by chocolate" desserts as well. It's not so much that there is too much chocolate, but the overall size of the dessert.
I blame all those dunderheads in Congress who haven't the courage to leave the triumvirate of USA, Myanmar and Liberia that still use Imperial measurements. Look what happened with masks. Nuff said.
Excess flour can toughen dough so I figured I would just rely on the kindess of the parchment paper to pull through - if you do try it with flour, let us know how it turns out!
So I did a test document to see if I could make recipe is printable. I added a link just before the recipe, after the headnote. Let me know: 1) If you can see and read it, and 2) If the font is too big. Thanks! : )
About printing recipes: For many years I have used a recipe app called Pepperplate. It has a long list of popular web sites from which you can import a recipe by entering the url (think Epicurious, New York Times, Washington Post, many more). Otherwise you can manually enter a recipe by copying and pasting. Your recipes are then searchable. For years this was free; now it's $3/month. At the time it went behind a paywall, I had so many recipes I would have had to print out or save somehow, it would have taken me forever. So I pay the $3 monthly. The recipes do print out very neatly, usually on one page. You can add notes. Maybe this will help someone, and maybe there are free recipe apps out there still.
I use Paprika 3. One pays for the app upfront, but after that, there is no charge. I have used the Paprika app for years and it is fantastic. There is a free version one can try first.
Do you get the Cacao Barry locally in Paris, or do you mail-order it? Place des Vosges was right around the corner from us when we lived in Paris. Wonder why I don't remember that restaurant! (Ha-ha!!! West Country Girl was more in our price range...)
I too had a question about the size of the tart pan for this recipe. Since it wasn't mentioned, I used a standard 10" pan. I filled the tart as full as it would go and ended up with about 1 1/2 cups extra filling. The tart almost overflowed when it puffed up but eventually settled down. I put the extra filling in a little ramekin and baked it as a sort of soufflé. Next time I'll use a 12" tart pan.
It is mentioned in the post and in the recipe steps but I clarified it so it's more evident.
Hi David,
Thank you for being so generous with fantastic recipes and cooking wisdom.
As I freely admit that my dough rolling skills are sub-par, would it be okay to press the crust into the tart pan?
Yours,
Ellen
Please help, David—can't find what size tarte pan you are using!!
It's mentioned in the post: "Knowing that no one out there has an 8-inch tart pan, I scaled it up for a more standard 9-inch (23cm) tart pan."
Thank you for another superb recipe. Just a note about the crust. When I was baking for local restaurants, I didn’t have time for fiddling with rolling out dough and pie weights. At the time I was using Lindsey Shere’s recipe (Chez Panisse Dessert book), a cup of flour to a stick of butter, which is a bit more fragile but still had minimal shrinkage during blind baking.
I put all of the ingredients in the food processor, pulse until it is just coming together. I dump this in the tart pan and put the dough in by hand, as thinly as possible. It then goes in the fridge for at least two hours and then is docked and popped into a 425F oven, no pie weights. I used the same method for this tart and there was almost no shrinkage and a beautiful, even colour.
I also found the quantity of filling would have been better suited to a 10” tart pan, but no problem, made some tartlets with the left over. I so enjoy the precision of your recipes and dedication to metric - it makes baking SO much easier! (PS - I still like to weigh liquids, sorry!)
Thanks for this David, and for all the recipes you have shared over the years. I’d like to make this for a large family gathering but that would mean I would have to prepare it either in advance and freeze it, or keep it for three days or so before serving. Do you think it would freeze, or should I choose a different recipe if I can’t make it fresh?
I had quite a few issues with the recipe, and I consider myself a pretty seasoned baker. First, the crust became too warm while I was rolling it out, so it stuck to the bottom parchment. I rolled it to 13" diameter, so I don't think I was rolling it too thin . . . but after re-chilling it and trying again, I was able to make it work after quite a few patches. Second, I had WAY too much filling, as others have said. I don't think I over-whipped, as I got it to soft peaks - maybe I was too concerned about deflation and didn't integrate the chocolate enough? Third, what do you do with leftovers - leave them at room temperature? I refrigerated mine, and they became very hard . . . I had to leave it out to soften. Still tasty, though!
I didn't have those issues (I showed the dough before and after rolling) My filling deflated when I mixed it enough so that it fit in the pan. Here are the original proportions:
Tart Dough: 150g flour, 100g butter, pinch of salt, 75g sugar, 1 egg
Filling: 150 g dark chocolate, 1 egg, 2 egg yolks, 30g sugar, 100g butter
So if you want to try it again, using the chef's proportions in his cookbook (which says "serves 4" you can. (He says to bake it in a 20cm tart pan.)
I made this yesterday and everyone loved it. I had no problem rolling out the dough. I ended up with too much filling. I am guessing that I over whipped the eggs. I whipped them for 5 exactly minutes. Next time I will use a lower speed and pay closer attention. I baked the extra filling and I was thinking that it would be dessert tonight but my husband ate it for breakfast this morning!
I made it today. It is sin on a plate! Utterly delicious! Thank you!
This sounds utterly delicious - can’t wait to make it. I love my scale and using metric measurements for baking - so much for accurate. Thank you!
What a fascinating post. The description of your method for converting the recipe for the rest of us was very interesting. Incidentally, I was looking for a special restaurant to take my partner to for his birthday a few weeks ago. He is a man and I am a woman. I was about to book Ambroisie, a major treat, when I was one online review said that they handed a guest menu with no prices to the woman they were with, despite the woman being the host and having her name on the booking. For that reason I did not book there. We are going to Pierre Gagnaire instead - let's hope they don't do the same. Maybe it's just old-fashioned-ness as you suggest, but these days I consider it a faute de service, if you can call it that. It happened to me in a Paris restaurant a few years and left a sour enough taste that I never went back. Then it happened again at a Michelin-starred restaurant near Avignon that I took my husband to (again, my treat). The restaurant had a young chef and young staff so I was flabbergasted at such an outdated gesture in 2022. What hotel school is currently teaching 18 year-olds that women should always get a menu without prices? My husband urged me to consider it a momentary error rather than an insult to me as a full participant in 21st century society (which is how it feels). For his sake I tried to forget about it ; the meal did indeed turn out to be delicious and the rest of the service charming. However it still irks me that in a country like France, which prides itself on being the cradle of human rights and equality, this practice seems to be more than an occasional encounter for the 50% of us who happen to be women.
Happy baking to those who're just here for the recipe!
To me, I agree that it's an outdated/antiquated habit. A (female) friend, who is a highly-regarded chef (in the US), took me to a 3-star restaurant in Paris and told them in advance to give me the menu without the prices, as she was taking me to dinner, which worked.
A while back I was in Australia with cooking legend Diana Kennedy and when they served her first, she ranted that she hated that custom. I mentioned something about that habit of serving women first on Twitter at the time, as it might be outdated, and a lot of people (including women) disagreed. My pet peeve is when I'm with a woman and they order the wine, when the server gives it to me to taste. It's particularly odd when the woman I'm dining with is a wine expert or sommelier, which has happened to me more than once...
This looks and sounds so delicious. I am one of those people who avoids the “death by chocolate “ desserts, it’s just too much chocolate for me. This sounds so good, thanks for sharing.
As much as I love chocolate, I avoid the "death by chocolate" desserts as well. It's not so much that there is too much chocolate, but the overall size of the dessert.
I totally agree with that as well, I do like chocolate I just don’t need a dessert that can feed 4 people, lol
I blame all those dunderheads in Congress who haven't the courage to leave the triumvirate of USA, Myanmar and Liberia that still use Imperial measurements. Look what happened with masks. Nuff said.
Dear David,
Is there a reason why you don’t lightly dust the parchment with flour to prevent sticking?
Excess flour can toughen dough so I figured I would just rely on the kindess of the parchment paper to pull through - if you do try it with flour, let us know how it turns out!
So I did a test document to see if I could make recipe is printable. I added a link just before the recipe, after the headnote. Let me know: 1) If you can see and read it, and 2) If the font is too big. Thanks! : )
About printing recipes: For many years I have used a recipe app called Pepperplate. It has a long list of popular web sites from which you can import a recipe by entering the url (think Epicurious, New York Times, Washington Post, many more). Otherwise you can manually enter a recipe by copying and pasting. Your recipes are then searchable. For years this was free; now it's $3/month. At the time it went behind a paywall, I had so many recipes I would have had to print out or save somehow, it would have taken me forever. So I pay the $3 monthly. The recipes do print out very neatly, usually on one page. You can add notes. Maybe this will help someone, and maybe there are free recipe apps out there still.
I use Paprika 3. One pays for the app upfront, but after that, there is no charge. I have used the Paprika app for years and it is fantastic. There is a free version one can try first.
Do you get the Cacao Barry locally in Paris, or do you mail-order it? Place des Vosges was right around the corner from us when we lived in Paris. Wonder why I don't remember that restaurant! (Ha-ha!!! West Country Girl was more in our price range...)
Yes, I get it at G. Detou - they sell chocolate in bulk! https://www.davidlebovitz.com/g-detou/
Ils ont Detout! Been there and drooled a lot.