Smarties Tart

Remember when retro daddy bought me the huge baking hamper at our school golf day. Well one of the gorgeous cookbooks in there was Chocolat, The Chocolate Bible by Cordon Bleu. It couldn't have come to a better home. It is an amazing book and one of the recipes that I just had to make  was the Smarties Tart. Sure to be a hit with little people (and their parents!). Now it's 7.30 on a Sunday morning and I'm taking this to a late afternoon bbq so I'll report back when I actually take it out with me.

It's very simple to make and if you do your tart shell ahead of time then the hard work is out of the way.

Pastry
120g soft butter
100g icing sugar
1 egg
200g sifted plain flour

Ganache
100g dark chocolate
100ml whipping cream
110g smarties (or just buy a big bag to enjoy and save some for the tart)

So first make your pastry. Now if you have a Thermomix I just used the pastry recipe in my Everyday cooking book and added the icing sugar. Too easy. If you want to follow this recipe then beat the butter, icing sugar and salt together until well blended. Add in the egg and flour and mix to combine. Press the crumbs into a ball and place on a floured surfance. Flour your hands and knead quickly to mix the dough together. Form into a ball and flatten into a disc and wrap in cling wrap and leave in the fridge for at least half an hour.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees and grease your tart tin. You can use a round tin like the recipe called (they used a 20cm tin) but I was dying to use my new rectangular tin. Now you want to roll out your dough large enough to fill your tin and place in your tin then refrigerate or freeze for about 10 minutes. This helps to prevent the dough from shrinking when you bake it. Now line with baking paper and baking beans/rice/lentils etc and bake for 10-20 minutes until edges are a nice golden colour, then remove paper and baking beans and bake a further 10-20 minutes at a lower temperature (160 degrees). Remove from oven and leave to cool in tray on rack.

Now to the ganache, the easy part. Heat your cream in a saucepan until simmering and pour over the chocolate which you have chopped and placed in a bowl.

Stir well until the chocolate melts and you have a smooth glossy mixture. Now I missed this bit but leave your ganache to cool and thicken. I didn't do this but it still worked out. Now pour the ganache into the cooled tart shell and place smarties on top. Pop in the fridge for at least 30 minutes or until you need it. Enjoy.

Edited to add that the tart was delicious, the kids ate it all up and there was nothing left. I wouldn't leave the smarties in the tart longer than 3 hours as the colours faded and went into the chocolate so best to make it up to 3 hours before otherwise do your ganache and then press the smarties in at the last minute! I am definitely making this again!