Chocolate lemon tart

I made this cheerful yellow tart some time back when I was craving citrus. My sister suggested a chocolate lemon combination. I thought it sounded pretty good. What could go wrong with my two favourite flavours? Thus, I set about searching for recipes to make a chocolate lemon tart. My mind envisioned a crisp chocolate tart dough, layered with a chocolate ganache, followed by lemon cream, then topped with candied lemons. And the tart came out looking exactly like how I had dreamt it to be.

 

Chocolate lemon tart

Zesting and juicing lemons; A slice of tart

The tart was made from several recipes, since I didn't like any full tart recipe. In fact, every component of the tart was from different sources, so it makes up to four different websites! Haha. The chocolate tart dough, came from Johnny Iuzzini's Dessert Fourplay, the ganache, a simple mix of cream and chopped dark chocolate, the lemon cream, from Pierre Herme's recipe (found here, I halved it and it produced just enough for one tart) and the candied lemons were whipped up from the instructions here.
 

Candied lemons; Tart; Chocolate ganache



Candied lemon slice

While candying the lemons, there were some slices leftover, and also, some lemony (great stuff!) syrup. Don't throw them away! It is precious liquid gold. Save them and use them for lemony drinks. Like what I did for a picnic with friends that week. I mixed these with some water and freshly squeezed lemon juice. Stir together and taste, add more lemon juice if you want the drinks to be more tart (which I did). Freeze them in water bottles. Take them out when you're heading out on a hot hot day for a lovely lazy picnic and they will be heaven in a cup. As they were stored in the freezer (instead of the fridge), by the time we reached our destination, the drinks were still slowly defrosting, ensuring we had icy cold drinks the whole noon. Scrumptious! (:

Orange almond dark chocolate ganache

Instead of using plain old dark chocolate, I used a mixture of dark chocolate I had. I have tons of chocolate bars from my last trip to Australia, so I used a mix of almond dark chocolate and orange dark chocolate as I thought it might complement the overall taste.

Overall taste test? I had chose the chocolate tart dough based on several raving reviews, but I thought that it was only average. Perhaps I rolled it out too thick and so it affected the overall taste. Also, the ganache was overwhelmed by the chocolate tart dough (again, perhaps due to the thickness) and I couldn't really taste the ganache. The lemon cream was not bad, just the right amount of sweet and sour to it, but I think I undercooked it a little as it turned out to be quite watery even after I left the tart to chill in the fridge for a few hours. It appeared thick at first when I first took it out of the fridge. Then it slowly softened after ten minutes out in the Singapore heat. :(

It was a not bad attempt, but I think the traditional lemon tart appeals to me. So in future, look out when I try out different lemon tart recipes I've bookmarked. :)