morello cherry & custard chocolate tart

I'd call myself resourceful when it comes to baking at home. I try to make the most of the ingredients I have and do my best to make sure that nothing gets wasted. Partly it's also being lazy and not being bothered to head to the shops to grab that last ingredient; I just substitute it with something similar I have at home. So far it seems to work ok; I'll let you know if it ever doesn't!

This Morello Cherry & Custard Chocolate Tart was one I made with the remaining half jar of morello cherries I had. I also had the Chocolate Careme Pastry sitting in the fridge so it worked out quite well that everything was at home and I could concentrate on simply assembling the tart. Making tarts is quite a stressful business - no matter how many times I make a tart, something always goes wrong. My shortcrust pastry almost always shrinks when it goes in the oven, occasionally the liquid will seep out of the tart from the tiniest of holes where the pastry has been rolled out to thin and more often than not, I'm prone to burning myself moving the tart in and out of the oven.

Recipe is from the Careme Pastry website here. It's a pretty straight forward recipe but here are some tips.

The Careme Pastry sheet isn't quite big enough for a long thin tart pan like this. You'll need to cut and join the pastry to get the length. Make sure you roll out so that the join isn't thicker that the rest of the pastry.

Use your fingers to press the pastry into the corners/sides of the tin.

If you haven't discovered pie weights, these are miraculous little things. Line your tart base with these and blind bake in the oven. Pie weights can be reused unlike recipes which get you to use beans and rice for blind baking.

Whisk the custard filling so that there are no lumps. Make sure you strain the morello cherries so that that they don't colour the custard filling too much.

In go the morello cherries (so very adorable and plump!)

Top with the custard filling. Please, please don't overfill the tart shell like I did. It will be difficult to move into the oven.

The recipe says to cook for about 25 minutes. Mine took about 40 minutes to cook. At 25 minutes, the filling was still runny and was nowhere near close to setting. Let the tart sit in the tin to cool when it comes out of the oven. Refrain from trying to take it out as the tart shell is likely to crack and split whilst it's still warm. 

I love, love, love morello cherries and currently considering stocking up on jars in bulk. They are gorgeously yummy and this morello cherry tart made a great treat at my family's christmas dinner. Careme Pastry is something I swear by (great for when you can't be bothered making your own and it's very easy to use - just take out of the freezer and defrost for about an hour to two). Tastewise, this dark chocolate shortcrust pastry was quite rich and mum did find it overpowered the custard a little bit but on the whole, the tart was yummy and I think that's the most important thing!