Pierre Hermé Chocolate & Raspberry Tart

One evening at the end of the work day, my sweet colleague and friend bounded up to my desk and said, “It was AMAZING!”

I stared at her blankly for a few seconds, wondering what in the world she was referring to. She finally pointed to the empty tupperware in her hand, and I realized she was talking about the slice of tart that I had handed to her earlier in the day. Ah =) Heartwarming…

Yup, I finally had a go at baking my very first tart two weeks ago! And I’m pleased to say it went quite well. All thanks to my precious Pierre Hermé chocolate dessert book, which finally arrived in the mail from Amazon. (That’s the guy whose cookie recipe I’ve used many times this year. He really knows his chocolate!)

I thought to start off with his Chocolate and Raspberry Tart because it looked pretty, and I wanted to try making a tart. And ooh… it was scrumptious =) I’m a little too lazy to post the recipe this time, but here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure.

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I started off by making the dough, a portion of which I had to press into my pie tin and poke holes in with a fork. (The rest of the dough went into the freezer.)

Then I weighed down the dough with some rice before putting it into the oven.

After I took the dough out of the oven, I scattered a couple of raspberries over it.

Then I melted some ever-excellent Valrhona chocolate with butter, and mixed it with egg and sugar…

… and poured the mix into the pie crust.

I let the pie bake for a little while more, scattered more raspberries over the top of it, and ta da – the final product! The chocolate filling was soft, rich and delicious, and the slight sourness of the berries gave it extra kick. As you can see in the picture below, part of the crust looked a wee bit burnt, but oddly it tasted great. Still, I would bake it for a slightly shorter time the next time round, to get the color just right.

This was fun =)

Addendum (11 Jan 2010): I discovered that a reader had a go at making the tart after she read my post, using a copy of the recipe which she found here.