The Fresh Loaf

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Lime Chocolate Tart

Benito's picture
Benito

Lime Chocolate Tart

I’ve never made a tart with a chocolate pastry before so decided it was time to try.  The first recipe I tried must have had a typo in it as it was more like a loose batter than pastry dough.  After tossing that attempt in the bin I decided to modify the pâté sucrée recipe that I’ve had success with by adding cocoa powder and a bit of vanilla.  It certainly baked up well so let’s hope it tastes good too.

I had some filling left over so baked it in a ramekin, the filling is good, but I like lime filling to be more tart.  I will adjust the filling next time, less sweetened condensed milk, more egg and more lime juice and zest.

Filling

1 cup lime juice

1.5 tsp finely grated lime zest

2 cans (14 oz=414 mL) sweetened condensed milk 

3 medium eggs, lightly beaten

 

Chocolate pâté sucrée

 

75g icing sugar
250g plain flour 
125g butter
1 large egg, beaten (plus 1 large egg white, depending on consistency)

4.5 tbsp cocoa powder 31 g

 

Pinch of salt

½ tsp vanilla

 

Put the icing sugar, flour, cocoa powder, salt and butter into a food processor and blitz to breadcrumbs. Continue to blitz, and gradually add the whole egg and vanilla until the dough comes together. You can check to see if it is hydrated enough by carefully picking a small amount up and compressing it to see if it forms a cohesive dough, if it does not, you may need to add a little of the egg white. Form the dough into a little round, cover with clingfilm and rest in the freezer for 10 minutes.

 

Roll the dough out to 12” diameter between two sheets of parchment paper (keep one for later).  If cracks form during rolling, just dab a bit of water on the cracks and bring the edge back together.  Remove the top parchment paper and transfer to the tart pan.  Gently press the dough into the pan ensuring that it goes into every nook and cranny.  Avoid stretching the dough as that leads to excessive shrinkage during baking.  If there are crack just use excess dough that is above the pan edge to fill the crack smoothing it out quickly with your fingers trying not to melt the butter.  Dock the dough.

 

Chill it for 30 minutes in the freezer, this helps avoid shrinkage. Pre-heat your oven to 350F (180C) while the tart dough is chilling in the freezer.  Once the oven is ready line the top of the crust with foil or parchment paper and place pie weights or dried beans to keep the pie crust from puffing when baking.

 

Bake the pâte sucrée for 20 minutes. Carefully remove the parchment paper filled with weights and bake for 5 more minutes, until the edges of the crust are golden.  This bake time was reduced since this filling needs more time to bake than the original recipe with this pastry.

 

Set the tart shell aside to cool (still in the dish). Leave your oven on at 350F/180C.

 

In the meantime, prepare the filling:  in a mixing bowl, whisk together the lime zest, lime juice, eggs and condensed milk until well incorporated.  Pour the filling into the cooled crust and place in the oven again.  Bake for 20 more minutes until slightly jiggly in the middle but set around the edges.

 

Remove and allow to cool at room temperature for 25 minutes; after that refrigerate until very firm, at least 5-6 hours or ideally overnight.

 

 My index of bakes

Comments

naturaleigh's picture
naturaleigh

This looks so delicious and I love anything citrus.  The combination of lime and chocolate sounds very interesting too.  I've done tarts with a chocolate crust before, but went with blackberries mixed in the filling.  I'll have to give this a try!  Since I like my citrus more on the zingy side as well, I'll follow your advice and amp the zest amount up a bit.  I'm wondering if some coconut cream could be substituted in for some of the sweetened condensed milk (since I have some of that but not the canned milk)...?   Glad to find a tried and tested chocolate crust recipe that uses cocoa instead of cookie crumbs too.  Thanks for the inspiration!

Benito's picture
Benito

I love citrus as well Leigh.  You’ll need to try this if you like citrus and like chocolate.  I remember the first time I saw a lime tart like this and thought that it might be weird, but in fact lime and chocolate are excellent together.  I was pleased with the chocolate pastry and would make it again and maybe amp up the chocolate adding more cocoa powder.  The lime filling wasn’t tart though and I like this type of thing to have a bit more tart bitterness to it.  I have another lime filling recipe that uses half the sweetened condensed milk and more egg yolks that I’ll try next time, I think it would be more tart.

Benny

semolina_man's picture
semolina_man

Looks great!  Bruno Albouze has a number of chocolate crust tarts on his yt and website. 

 

Chocolate pastry

https://youtu.be/RMjpYV74Iqk

 

Lemon pie can be converter to lime

https://youtu.be/Ej4nWxoh2E4

Benito's picture
Benito

Thank you I’ll have a look at those too before making this again. 
Benny

idaveindy's picture
idaveindy

I forget why I bought it, but my local Patel Brothers Indian grocery had citric acid crystals, 100 g for $2.49 US.   That price was early Feb. 2022, so before the current round of food price inflation.

Benito's picture
Benito

I’ve never tried adding citric acid to anything before Dave, I suppose it could help?  I’d prefer just to change the recipe to reduce the sweetness and bring out the lime’s natural acidity though.