0.1 oz more chocolatey-er

THOMY's birthday was this week, so I made him a Chocolate Espresso Tart as his birthday cake.



I took the recipe from my new Family Baking Book by America's Test Kitchen. I'm a fan of ATK's shows on public television and I consider their word on foodstuffs as nearly gospel. According to one of their taste tests, the best bittersweet chocolate to use in a recipe like the tart is 60% cacao by Ghirardelli. The recipe calls for a 12 oz. bar, but we could find only the 5.25 oz bags of chocolate squares. Two+ bags later, the closest I could come to the recommended weight is 12.1. So I gave THOMY .1 to grow on.

I would like to register a complaint, though. I don't know what I did wrong, if anything, but the tart crust recipe didn't work for me. I followed it to the letter, but the dough would not solidify, gathering around the blades of the food processor, UNTIL I dribbled more cream into it than what was called for. I don't know how much I added, but I had to. Otherwise I was going to have a bowl of pretty pastry meal.



Even so, the tart seemed to please the birthday boy. And that's the important thing, right? I'm grateful he's been around for another year.