I've been asked to cater for my drama group's murder mystery night (a paltry hundred or so!), and this is one of the desserts i've chosen to do - pretty straightforward, can be prepped in advance and always goes down very well! It's adapted from one I found on the BBC Good Food site, with a few additions... and to a friend of mine, this is what you missed the other night!This can be served warm straight from the oven, but i actually quite like it as a chilled dessert - though i also like it with ginger and vanilla ice-cream which is a bit random i guess! Hot or cold, the inside is nice and gooey and there's a few different textures in there.
Recipe (for about eight tarts)
About 500g sweet pastry - I use Richard Bertinet's recipe
1 bar of Green and Blacks 70% plain chocolate, of which about 2/3rds melted
50g plain flour
4 eggs
75g butter
100g caster sugar
4-5 pieces of crystallised ginger
Ginger and vanilla ice cream to serve
(you will also need fluted metal pastry cases and baking beans)
Roll out pastry til about 3mm thick and cut to make 12cm fluted pastry cases (leave extra overhanging as the pastry will shrink slightly as it cooks). Bake these blind on about 170 degrees for about 10 mins until just golden. Leave to cool for a few minutes, then trim the cases to fit the fluting of your cases so they're nice and neat (you can also east the of-cuts which are lovely!!).
Whisk the eggs, flour, sugar and butter together, then add about 2/3rds of the melted chocolate. Reserve the rest of the chocolate, keeping it melted. Whisk the mixture together, then fill each case about 4/5ths full. Bake these for 6-7 minutes until the top is slightly firm. Leave to cool slightly, then level each one off topping it up with rest of the melted chocolate (add more if you need to...).
Finely chop the ginger, into small square 1mm thick, then place decoratively on top and grate over some more chocolate. You can either serve them now while still warm and the chocolate is largely melted, or chill for a couple of hours and serve it cold. In either case, serve with a quenelle of the ice cream.
