Chocolate Pear Tart

This pear tart has been the only dish we have been dreaming about these past couple of weeks. While spending the day in the nearby city of Nîmes, we made a stop at Farmers, a quaint café serving vegetarian and vegan friendly dishes. Although the main dishes were delicious, we were mainly drawn in by their dessert display. We ended up going for a version of a pear and chocolate tart, served with a dollop of whipped cream. Between the three of us, it was gone in a matter of seconds. The only way to enjoy that tart again was to recreate it at home! Below is the recipe we came up with, adding a few little twists (the rum for example) to really make it our version of the dessert. As winter has been settling in here (only a few more weeks until some snow) we have been curling up next to the chimney with a slice of tart in hand!

Ingredients

• 125 g of unsalted butter

• 1/2 cup of granulate sugar

• 2 eggs

• 3/4 cup of almonds (we used sliced almonds)

• 2 tablespoons of flour

• 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract

• Rum

• 3 firm pears

• Pastry dough

• Dark chocolate

• 1 lemon

Recipe

1. Preheat oven to 180 C.

2. Combine the sugar, flour, vanilla extract, butter, eggs, almonds, and about 2 splashes of rum in a food processor. Blend until well mixed. Mixture should be somewhat thick. We slowly added additional flour to get the best consistency (ended up adding about 4 tablespoons of flour, have extra on hand). Food processor would be best for this recipe, as it blends the ingredients well.

3. Melt the dark chocolate.

4. Peal the pears. Slice into quarters. Add some lemon juice so that the pears do not turn brown.

5. Feel free to make your pastry dough from scratch, but in this recipe we bought a pre-made one from the store. We have used them countless of times, and they are always delicious. We usually stick with an organic brand. Lay out dough in a quiche or tart pan. We used parchment paper to make sure the dough did not stick to the pan.

6. Spread your mixture from the food processor evenly in the dish. Add the sliced pears (in any design you prefer).

7. Finally drip the melted chocolate all over the top and add an extra splash of lemon juice.

8. Bake for 50 minutes. If the top of the tart starts to brown, cover it with some tin-foil.

9. Optional - after about 30 minutes of the baking, add some sliced almonds to the top of the tart. Let brown in the oven for the remaining baking time.