Bake! Citrus-scented chocolate tart

Marthe chose the citrus-scented chocolate tart for her Bake! pick.... Although it's not technically on the schedule until the beginning of July, I will likely not be baking much for the next few weeks, and we had our end-of-the-year staff picnic today, so it seemed like the perfect time to try it out.

This tart starts with the cocoa version of the sweet pastry dough. Given my success with the sweet pastry dough, I was excited to get a more workable chocolate pastry dough than the one I tried for the tartlets last weekend. Things seemed to be going well as I mixed up the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, unsalted butter, and egg (I made a half recipe for one 10" tart) in my food processor. I refrigerated the dough for a day. Sadly, once I began the rolling-out process, this dough gave me the same sticky, rippy problems I had with the other chocolate pastry dough. It actually really reminded me of the troublesome cookie dough crust; I ended up having to do a lot of piecing together to cover the pan. I much prefer the basic sweet dough and the rich pie crust for ease of rolling and transferring.

Anyway, after I got the tart dough in place in the pan, I set to work on the filling, which was easy and smelled heavenly. It was all mixed in a saucepan: half-and-half plus sugar, and then butter and semi-sweet chocolate, and then eggs and salt, and finally lemon zest, orange zest, lemon juice, orange juice, vanilla extract, and a bit of triple sec.

Mine baked for almost twice as long as specified in the recipe; it just kept looking jiggly and the instructions say "bake until the filling is set." I was surprised by the mousse-like texture of the final product; I was expecting something a little more solid.

The tart looked a little plain, and I didn't have any orange slices to use as a garnish, so I made a simple chocolate-butter mixture and drizzled some over the top, just to jazz it up a bit.

This tart was delicious. With my massive sweet tooth, I loved that it was made with semi-sweet chocolate instead of the bittersweet called for in many of NM's other recipes. My kiddos both loved it, as did hubby. One of my friends at the lunch today said, "Oh, my, the flavor just explodes in your mouth! This puts the rest of the food here to shame!" which I thought was quite a compliment. =) Even my dad, who doesn't like chocolate, said it was excellent (although too chocolately for him, of course).