Getting Ready for Easter: Chocolate & Ginger Easter Egg Tart

Easter is less than 5 days away and I am SO excited – not just for the super long weekend – but because we can celebrate the victory that we have over death and sin through Jesus’ death and resurrection – and it’s a celebration of a new life that everyone can have through Jesus! So yes! I’m REALLY excited 😀 We often celebrate Good Friday and Easter as a solemn reminder (well, the church background that I come from does anyway), but I reckon Easter should be a joyous occasion, a celebration because our greatest enemy has been defeated, not by ourselves, but by our Saviour! What is there NOT to celebrate?

These past few years have been a steep learning curve spiritually because God has been reminding me about the centrality of the cross and how Jesus dying on the cross is not about me, but about Him and how He wants to glorify the Father’s name, and calls me to do the same. So it will be a special time and I’m definitely looking forward to it.

Now, I don’t really know where this tradition of eggs, chocolate and bunnies came from, and how it was suddenly connected to celebrating Easter, but a quick read from Wikipedia tells me that Easter eggs may have started from the traditions of when Christians were ‘celebrating’ Lent, they were not allowed to eat dairy (including eggs) so come Easter Sunday, they had to use up all their eggs (which they ate hard boiled at that time) as part of a Clean-Up day. Another view is that it could be from the symbolism created by the Catholic church where they dye their eggs red to represent the blood of Christ, and the shell of the egg represents the tomb and when they crack the egg open, it represents the new life in Jesus and his resurrection. I don’t know which is true, or if any are true and there are many other legends connected to this as well, which I found a fascinating read, but adds nothing to the meaning of Easter I think 😛

So anyway, back to the tart – I chose to make this tart because as I was reading through the Masterchef Magazine, and this was the recipe that struck me because it uses ginger in dessert. Chinese usually do include ginger in their savouries and sometimes their sweets, because ginger, in itself, has nutritional qualities especially for confinement periods after giving birth! So, putting ginger into a dessert isn’t very unusual, but what was interesting was ginger in a western dessert. I tried to picture in my head what it would taste like, but because I didn’t normally like ginger, it was difficult for me not be biased against it. But I went against my own notions about eating ginger and went ahead and tried it anyway, because it looked so good in the magazine!

This is Marion Grasby’s recipe, and I whilst I followed the ingredients, our methods differed a little…this was how I did it last week!

Chocolate and Ginger Easter Egg Tart

• Preparation Time: 2 hours
• Setting Time: 2 hours
• Serves: 10

Ingredients for Pastry:

• 125g cold unsalted butter, chopped
• 185 g (1 1/4 cup) Plain Flour
• 25g (1/4 cup) Cocoa powder
• 55g (1/3 cup) icing sugar
• 2 egg yolks

Method

Line a 23cm tart pan and butter the sides well (especially when its not non-stick)

Combine the dry ingredients (butter, flour, cocoa powder, icing sugar) together in a food processor and blitz until it becomes like breadcrumbs. Then add in the 2 egg yolks and blitz together until it forms a dough. (I forgot to separate the above two steps, and blitzed everything together, which was fine, but it just didn’t mix that well, so I would recommend combining the dry ingredients first).

Just a tip I learnt about separating egg whites from yolks (which is probably old news for some), crack the egg horizontally  directly on the benchtop (not at an angle on a bowl like I used to). By doing that, you would get a perfect crack around the egg, making it easier to pry it open to take the yolk out. Awesome tip from Lifehacker!

Once the dough is formed, tip it out onto a clean counter top and form it together into a disc (round-ish) shape. Wrap it in cling wrap and then place it in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

Then, pre-heat your oven to 200 degrees (celcius). After 30 minutes, take it out of the wrapper and if you are so inclined to roll it out, you can roll it out and then place it onto the prepared tart pan.

Another Tip: But if you want to do it the lazy easier way, try this method instead. I like this method better because shortcrust pastry can be really crumbly and it’s quite difficult to roll out without it crumbling everywhere. Place the whole piece of pastry on the tart pan (ideally you would have shaped it into a flat disc) and press and shape the pastry into the tart pan making sure that its spread evenly.

Then, poke a few holes onto the pastry with a fork and place it back into the fridge for another 20 minutes. Then take it out of the fridge, place a piece of baking paper onto the pastry and fill it with pie weights or rice. Then bake it in the oven for about 15 -20 minutes until its cooked. Let the pastry cool down. While it cools, you can start on the filling.

Ingredients for Chocolate and Ginger Filling

• 250ml (1cup) cream
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 20g unsalted butter
• 350g dark chocolate, chopped
• 125g glace ginger (sliced – if you like ginger, than bigger chunks, but if not, then dice into smaller pieces)

In a saucepan, mix together cream, ground ginger and butter and stir with medium heat. Put the chocolate into a heatproof bowl…

…and just when the cream mixture starts to boil, pour the cream mixture onto the chocolate and stir until it completely melts. Stir in the glaced ginger and when mixed well, pour the filling into the cooled pastry tart.

Place the tart into the fridge and refrigerate for about 2 hours or until set. Then use Easter eggs to decorate it however you like! Just don’t be like me and use complementing chocolate flavours instead (i used mint chocolate and it didn’t really go together)

The ginger tart was…interesting. I didn’t like ginger that much, but in the chocolate tart it was not too bad – the chocolate seemed to mask the ‘bite’ that ginger has, but yet still has the taste. I realized how much ginger we had that night, and on top of it was more ginger in the dessert (that was totally coincidental). Those who loved ginger loved the tart, but those who didn’t mind it seemed to like it as well…but those that didn’t like ginger…hmm, I think they would have just preferred the chocolate part of it 🙂 I’m glad I tried to make it though, was an interesting experience and also it was a relatively simple tart to make. I have to say, the chocolate shortcrust pastry rocks..! I will definitely make it again the next time.

ps. How do you like our new theme?? I think we will stick with this for awhile!