Pecan & Chocolate Tart

I finally had the courage to invite two of our closest friends over to our place for dinner. For most natural cooks, having two guests is hardly a challenge but for me it's like cooking for a major event. My cooking style is very simple or in my own definition 'lazy'. I use condiments to a bare minimum and prefer to throw everything in the oven.

Knowing the fact that I can never prepare a feast as good as my guest(mydatewithfood.blogspot.com) and her husband, I kept my menu to a simple 3-course meal. However, I promised myself to put a lot more effort in making the desserts. Mixing the known with the unknown, I made Passionfruit Crème Brûlée (you can get the recipe here) and Pecan & Chocolate Tart.

So here comes my real challenge, baking the perfect Pecan & Chocolate Tart.

To bake the perfect tart is to get the right texture in the pastry. Too hard and you are left with a chipped tooth or flying pastry like what our guests and myself experienced that night. Or if it's too soft, you are basically eating uncooked pastry. A perfect pastry should be crumbly enough to hold its shape when you cut through it without making a mess.

Unfortunately my pastry was almost as solid as a rock. It would have been a disastrous dessert if not for the perfect combination of the pecan & chocolate filling and the crème fraîche. 

Recipe adopted from Delicious Sweet edition.

Serves 8

50g unsalted butter, softened
125g light brown sugar (I reduced it to 100g)
150ml golden syrup (I replaced it with maple syrup)
3 eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
100g milk chocolate, melted
200 pecan nuts, chopped, plus extra chopped pecans to serve (optional)
Icing sugar, to dust
Thick cream or ice cream, to serve (I used crème fraîche)

Pastry
1 2/3 cups (250g) plain flour
110 icing sugar, sifted
110g chilled unsalted butter, chopped
1 egg

For the pastry, place flour and icing sugar in a food processor and pulse to combine. Add butter and process until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add egg and process until mixture comes together and form a ball. Enclose in plastic wrap, then chill for 30 minutes.
Roll pastry out on a lightly floured workbench and use to line a 23cm loose-bottomed tart pan. Refrigerate for 30 minutes to chill.
Preheat oven to 180C. Line tart with baking paper, then fill with pastry weights or uncooked rice and blind-bake for 10 minutes. Remove paper and weights, then return the tart to the oven for a further 5 minutes until golden and dry.
Meanwhile, place butter, sugar and golden syrup in a bowl and beat until smooth. Add egg, vanilla, chocolate and nuts. Pour into tart case and bake for 30 minutes or until set. Set aside to cool.
Dust with icing sugar and serve at room temperature with cream or ice cream. Garnish with extra nuts, if desired.