Chocolate and Lime Tart

Inspired by sweeties, I love chocolate limes I thought I’d turn this into a sweet tart – it was a success, I think the OH ate half this in one go!
Ingredients:Sweet Pastry175g plain flour120g butter, cold diced30g caster sugar1 large egg, beaten
Lime Filling120ml lime juice240ml water270g caster sugar50g cornflour3 egg yolks2 tbsp butter
Grated zest of one limeGreen food colouring if desired.
Chocolate Ganache100ml single cream100g dark chocolate
Prepare the sweet pastry first. Sift the flour into a large bowl. Add the diced cold butter and rub in to the flour using your fingers or a pastry blender.

You only need to do this fairly roughly and it is fine to still have small blobs of butter throughout the mixture.

Stir through the caster sugar and then add the beaten egg, bring together roughly with a knife.

Tip the whole lot out onto your worksurface and and knead it lightly till it comes together and forms a ball.

Place the pastry in a plastic bag or clingfilm and then chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 190c/170c fan/Gas Mark 5.
Remove the pastry from the fridge and roll out to about 4mm thick, into a large enough piece to line your tart tin.
The quantities given here will make one 8” tart or 4 miniature tarts. (Links to the equipment can be found at the end of the post).

Lay the pastry over the tart tin and press it in gently using your fingers taking care not to stretch the pastry too much.

Trim off the excess pastry using a sharp knife or by rolling your rolling pin over the top of the tart tin.

Put this back in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes or until completely firm.
Remove from the fridge and prick the base of the pastry with a fork. Take a piece of baking paper 3-4 inches larger than the diameter of the tart.

Scrunch it up into a ball.

Then unscrunch it. Lay it into the pastry shell. The scrunching softens the baking paper and helps it to shape into the pastry tart. Fill with ceramic baking beans.

You can use dried rice of beans for this job, but ceramic baking beans are designed to distribute the heat evenly and support the shape of the pastry far better.
Bake in the oven for 15 minutes, after this time take out of the oven, remove the baking beans and baking paper. Return to the oven for a further 8 minutes until the base is completely cooked.

Allow to cool completely.
When your beautiful pastry shell is cooled we can get on with the lime filling. I use lime juice directly from a bottle which is easy to get from most supermarkets these days but use fresh limes if you prefer.

Place the water, lime juice, sugar, cornflour and egg yolks in a pan and using a whisk mix together thoroughly.

Add in the butter and place over a medium heat stirring constantly.

As the mixture heats up it will begin to thicken –keep stirring! When it starts to bubble cook for approx a further three minutes until it is nice and thick.
Remove from the heat and add in the lime zest and add green food colouring if you wish. The mixture is disappointingly yellow, like lemon curd so for me the colouring was a must. Although I have to admit maybe I went a bit overboard with it and it was a very vibrant green – so much so that the children refused to eat it!
Place the lime mixture into the cooled pastry shell and spread out roughly with a back of a spoon. Set to one side to cool completely.

When the lime layer is cold it’s time for the chocolate layer. Make a basic chocolate ganache using 100ml cream and 100g dark chocolate.
Chop the chocolate into small pieces ( I like to use Bournville as it works well in baking, don’t use G&B’s for ganache – it splits on me every time)

Place the cream in a pan and heat until almost boiling. Remove from the heat and add the chocolate.