merrifood

Chocolate meringue tart

Posted by merrifood on June 25, 2013 · 1 Comment 

This is a tart not for the faint of heart.  It is beautiful and it is rich.  The amazing thing about it is that it can be created with such little effort.  Yes, it’s three parts, but each of them only has a few ingredients!  I also love how simple meringue is to make (it’s just egg whites and sugar all whipped up) but how beautiful it looks when it’s browned in the oven.  It definitely lends a very fancy air to the tart, which makes it ideal for a birthday or another special occasion.

I would add though that if you do want to make it for a nice occasion, try to find a circular pie tin or better yet a fluted tart tin to make it look prettier.  For some reason I baked mine in a square tin and this led to me just cutting it into squares so it was more like a bar dessert.  This also worked out well though since the tart is admittedly quite rich and thus having small bite size pieces worked out well for my delicate Australian colleagues.

As with all desserts where chocolate is central, I highly recommend using a high quality and delicious brand of dark chocolate.  You can get away with 200 g (that’s a typical bar) of something really nice and then just 200 g of chocolate chips if you want though.

Chocolate meringue tart (adapted from Chit Chat Chomp)

Ingredients

Tart Base
200 g shortbread biscuits
1 tbsp cocoa powder
50 grams butter, melted

Tart Filling
400 grams dark chocolate – 70% is best
1 cup pouring cream (yeah, it should be heavy, not light…)

Meringue Top
4 egg whites
1 cup caster sugar (I ran out so used some regular granulated sugar too which is really fine)

Place biscuits in a food processor and grind until it’s fine crumbs.  Place in a bowl and mix in the cocoa powder and the melted butter.  Press the mixture into a circular loose bottomed round fluted tart tin if you have one.  Shockingly, I do not, so it went in a square pan.  Not very glamorous.  But the taste is divine no matter what.  Refrigerate the tart base for 15 minutes.

To make the filling, place the chocolate and cream in a small saucepan over low heat and stir until it’s melted and smooth.  Pour over the base, and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes (an hour or more is fine).

Preheat the oven to 200 C / 400 F.  To make the meringue top, place the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat on high speed until soft peaks form. (Soft peaks meaning when you take a spoon and lift the mixture, most of it stays peaked up and doesn’t fall back to the bowl.)  Gradually add the sugar and keep beating until the mixture is thick and glossy.  Spoon onto the tart and baek for 15 minutes or until the peaks are golden and the meringue is set.

Remove from the oven and put in the fridge to set.  Of course I tried to taste this when it was still warm, but it’s far better once it’s set in the fridge and all the flavours have settled into three different layers of deliciousness.

If you’ve made it in a pretty tin you can serve it like that, but since I made it in a normal bar tin (and snuck tastes), I cut it into squares to serve, which works well since it’s so rich that most people can only handle a small piece.  For the record, most people is not me.

Melting the chocolate

While chocolate is cooking, make the crust – here are the shortbread biscuit crumbs, melted butter, and cocoa ready to be mixed up

After letting it set in the pan in the fridge, spread the cooled chocolate all over the base and put back in the fridge to set

Then top with the meringue, which is just nicely whipped egg whites + sugar – make sure they are whipped up until soft peaks form

Look how nicely the meringue browns in the oven!

Yes I snuck a taste of the corner.  Just so I could show the chocolate to meringue ratio.

Cut up bars ready to be served

And cut into even smaller pieces ready to go on a plate.  As you can see the chocolate and meringue layers are fairly equal.

I absolutely loved this tart.  The meringue layer on top of the super dark chocolate was divine and the shortbread base added a nice little crunch.  It’s undoubtedly a really indulgent dessert, but I am not shy when it comes to making things like that, and I can assure you that it will greatly impress all your chocolate loving friends.