17. Chocolate Pear Tart

The first week of pastry school has kept me pretty busy, so sorry it’s been a week! Here’s a pear tart I made earlier… about 2 weeks ago in fact.

I’ll put up a short update post tomorrow about my first week, but today I just want to get this tart posted and done. Finally check it off the list!

I unfortunately didn’t actually get to try this pie myself, as I made it for the Macmillan coffee morning and so couldn’t cut into it. However, I heard that it was goooooood. So I’ll be making this again soon to actually try some!

Makes one tart

Ingredients

Pastry

• 260g (9oz) plain flour

• 100g (3.5oz) cocoa powder

• pinch of salt

• 100g (3.5oz) golden caster sugar

• 225g (8oz) butter, room temperature

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 2 large eggs

Filling

• 4 or 5 pears

• 1 egg

• 25g (1oz) butter

• 50g (1.75oz) melted chocolate

• 50g (1.75oz) self raising flour

Method

1. Beat the pastry sugar and butter together until creamy. Add in the vanilla extract and the eggs and beat until smooth.

2. Fold in the flour, cocoa powder and salt until a dough forms.

3. Chill your dough in the fridge, wrapped in clingfilm for at least 15 minutes to make it easier to work with.

4. Preheat the oven to 175C.

5. Roll out your dough until about 1/8” thick to fill your tart tin. The tin I used was actually an 8” round cake tin and I used about half of my dough, so there should be enough to make a lid if you so desire.

6. Grease your tart tin and then line it with your chocolate pastry. Pierce your pastry with a fork multiple times and then blind bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes.

7. Cut your pears in half and then in slices about 1/4” thick, removing the cores as you go.

8. Simmer your pear slices in a large shallow pan for 3-5 minutes until tender. Drain and leave to cool.

9. Beat together all the other filling ingredients to make a rudimentary cake mix, and then spread this in an even layer in your tart case. Then start arranging your pear slices around the edge, slightly overlapping. Keep doing this, spiralling further and further in until you have no more space to fill. (See the pictures)

10. Bake your tart for 30-40 minutes at 165C until the cake batter has fully cooked.

11. Allow to cool before cutting.

1. Pear Nutmeg Muffins

So, two weeks into living in my new place and I've barely picked up a mixing bowl. Pretty appalling really. I can try and excuse it by saying I've been settling into my new place, finding a temp job, exploring London life. But, I've had so much time in the evenings to bake and I haven't I've just been lazy. Which is kinda what you need sometimes. But anyway.

New place, new blog, new recipe.

Well, new recipe to me anyway.

The blog Pastry Affair is one of my favourite baking blogs out there. She's been at it for years. YEARS. Scrolling through her backlog is one of my favourite things to do. It's so so good. I've made stuff from her site before, but she's American, so sometimes I have to adapt a recipe from her original one, as we can't get some of that stuff here in the UK. For example, this recipe called for applesauce. Americans use applesauce as a spread on toast or in cakes or as a dessert. In the UK we use it as a sauce with roast pork. It's a bit different. So as I trawled the aisles of Tesco looking for applesauce and found two options. Apple sauce with cider vinegar or Apple sauce with sage and cider vinegar. Neither seemed like they would work. I even checked the baby food aisle for pureed apple, but there was nothing. So whilst these muffins don't follow the original recipe (which you can find here) they are still delicious.

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups (200g) self-raising flour

• 1/4 tsp nutmeg

• Pinch of salt

• 2 large eggs

• 2 tbsp vanilla extract

• 1 cup (200g) light brown sugar

• 5 tbsp (70g) unsalted butter, melted

• 1/4 cup (60ml) vegetable oil

• 3 tbsp (45ml) apple juice

• 1 conference pear, thinly sliced

Method

1. Preheat oven to 190C

2. Mix the melted butter, vanilla, sugar, apple juice, oil and eggs in a bowl until smooth and well combined.

3. Add in your flour a bit at a time, folding it in, and then add your nutmeg and salt.

4. Distribute the batter between 12 muffin cases.

5. Add your sliced pear pieces into the top of your batter (as below). If you can slice your pear thin enough you can try and shape them into roses, as I did for a couple (and sort of failed), or just stick them in.

6. Bake for 18-20 minutes until tops are golden brown and bounce back. Serve hot or at room temperature.

Some roses were more successful than others...

New place means a new oven, which meant that unfortunately I turned my temperature dial just a little too far. While still tasty, my muffins were browner than I'd meant for them to be. Oops.

For my first bake in the new place, these were pretty damn good. Hope you enjoy them!