How to make double chocolate cherry tarts: a great way to use up cherries that are going soft
- With chocolate in both the pastry and the ganache, these cherry tarts are rich and indulgent
- You can make them in advance, but they are better served warm from the oven
I love cherries, and when I find really good ones in the market – the large, sweet and crunchy types – I eat them on their own. Often, though, the cherries are soft, and these I tend to use in dessert recipes.
Double-chocolate cherry tarts
These rich tarts have chocolate both in the crust (in the form of unsweetened cocoa powder) and in the kirsch-flavoured ganache. You can assemble them in advance, but I think they taste better when the ganache and cherry filling are warm.
The chocolate crust recipe is adapted from The Pie and Pastry Bible (1998), by Rose Levy Beranbaum. You will need six tart pans with removable bases, about 10cm in diameter and 2cm deep (you can use smaller pans; just adjust the amount of ganache and cherry filling in each one).
For the dough:
200 grams (7oz) plain (all-purpose) flour, plus extra for rolling the dough
25 grams (3 tbsp and 1 tsp) unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
¼ tsp fine sea salt