The Recipe Room

I sometimes make this pear and chocolate tart on a Sunday as a All Postsgreat pudding to follow a roast ham or pork meal.  Pear, chocolate and almond flavours play really well together, and serving this dessert warm with ice cream simply adds to the pleasure.

Ingredients:

• 2 large, soft, ripe pears
• 155g good quality dark chocolate, broken into pieces
• 2 tbsp almond liqueur
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 340g puff pastry
• 1 egg, beaten, for the glaze
• Icing sugar to dust
• Cream or ice cream to serve
  

Preparation Guidelines:

1. Preheat the oven to 200ºC.  Lightly grease a baking tray and sprinkle it over with a little water.
2. Melt the chocolate gently in a saucepan over a low heat, add the almond liqueur and stir together until smooth.
3. Cut the pears into quarters, remove the cores, and then cut into thin slices.  Put the pears into a bowl and cover them with cold water, adding the lemon juice to the water to stop the pears from going brown.
4. Lightly dust a clean work surface with flour and roll the puff pastry out into a standard pie dish.  Place the pastry into the prepared dish and create circular edges around the pastry with a sharp knife.
5. Spoon the melted chocolate onto the surface of the pastry and spread it evenly on top.  Drain the pear slices really well, patting the surface very lightly with kitchen paper before laying them out over the chocolate, keeping the pear from touching the sides of the pie tin. Make little indent marks with the back of a sharp knife all around the top of the pastry edge for decoration before brushing the edges with the beaten egg to create the glaze.  Pop the tart in the oven and cook for around 20-25 minutes until the pastry has risen and goes golden brown.
6. Take the tart out of the oven and turn the temperature up to 230ºC.  Sift a plentiful dusting of icing sugar over the pears and pop the tart back in the oven to brown for 5 minutes.  Keep a close eye at this point so as not to burn it.  Remove from the oven and let sit for a few minutes before serving with cream or ice cream.

Time:   25 minutes to prepare, around 30 minutes to cook

Cocoa Treats: 6 servings

Tags: almond liqueur, chocolate recipes, cocoa treats, cream, dark chocolate, dessert, eggs, ice cream, icing sugar, lemon juice, Pear and Chocolate Tart, pears, puff pastry, tart

This entry was posted on Tuesday, 19 June, 2012 at 12:11 pm by Christina Warren and is filed under Desserts, Less than 1 hour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed RSS 2.0. You can leave a comment, or make a trackback from your own blog.