More chocolate

I did warn you that more recipes involving chocolate would have followed. I hope I will make some of my followers happy!

Last weekend I was in Siena at my parents' and every time I'm there I feel that I need to cook something for them. It might be as a way of thanking my mother and be in charge of the kitchen for a tiny bit after she slaves behind the cookers for days; or it might be to finish up some of the ingredients that lay around the cupboards for months (if not even years!) until complete putrification....my father and I have often suspected that my mother was running for the Nobel prize in medicine of moulds.

So before the Easter egg chocolate started acquiring that suspicious grey colour I decided to go through a wonderful book on chocolate that my mother has on her "cooking library" which must contain more than 150,000 recipes! And made dark chocolate tartlets. On Sunday the weather looked rather dodgy and inspired a real oven session instead.

The day before though the sun was shining and the temperature scarily warm. So I suggested to go and inspect the castle where my sister is planning to organise her wedding. I thought that was my duty of older sister....the photos below were sneakily taken in the garden.

In the garden there was an amazing tree that the owner claimed her son normally climb until the very top - that is something that needs to be tested...maybe not during the wedding though!

But back to our chocolate treat. The recipe is quite simple. What you need to make sure you do is to leave the base dough in the fridge for at least 30 minutes or it will be all floppy and difficult to arrange on the moulds.

Dark Chocolate Tartlets

Makes 6 medium tartlets

200g flour

100g cocoa powder

3 eggs

200g butter

100g caster sugar

200g dark chocolate

20dl cream

10 dl milk

1 egg

1. Make the base first. Mix the butter with the egg and whisk well. Mix the cocoa to the flour and sift them to the wet mixture.

2. Work quickly the paste and form a ball. Cover it with foil and leave in the fridge for at least 30 minutes (up to 2 hours).

3. Prepare the cream. Melt the chocolate at baigne-marie and then add the cream/milk and the beaten egg. Whisk well to ensure everything gets incorporated.

4. After the cooling time in the fridge, remove the base and use it to cover the bottom and sides of 6 tartlet moulds which you will have greased and floured before to avoid the pasty sticks to the bottom.

5. Cover the pasty with silver foil and fill them with dry beans so that the pasty won't raise while it is cooking. Don't pour the beans without the foil as I did once!

6. Cook them in the oven for 8 minutes. Once they are cooked, remove the beans and foils and set aside to cool down for a couple of minutes.

7. Fill the bases with the chocolate cream (if it has formed a foil on the surface, just whisk the cream again) almost up to the top leaving half a cm.

8. Cook the tartlets in the oven at C180 for 10 minutes.

9. Remove them from the oven and leave them to cool on a rack for at least 1 hour. Sprinkle before serving them with icing sugar.