French Indulgence

When we lived in Fayetteville, we were big fans of Vince Pinalto's La Maison des Tartes restaurant and bakery. Sadly, shortly after we moved to Pennsylvania, Vince had to shut down this wonderful pâtisserie, boulangerie, and café. So far as I knew, there was nothing else so close to true France in all of Northwest Arkansas.

I was lucky enough to take a cooking class with Vince once. I was even luckier that the particular syllabus for this class covered my favorite fare at La Maison -- tarts! I learned in the class how to make a wonderful crispy tart dough, in both sweet and savory variations. And when the question was posed as to what tarts we wanted to make, I spoke up without pause to request the recipe for Vince's chocolate bourbon tart.

Now, for your utter enjoyment, and for my personal record, I am posting the recipe here. Thank you, Vince, for this wonderful bit of indulgence. I hope it is of no insult to post your work for the world, but I know this deserves attention, and I believe in the benefits of open recipes as I do open source software. Use it. Enjoy it. Make it better, if you dare.

Sweet pastry dough
2 3/4 cups flour (high-gluten bread flour is best, but all-purpose will work)

1/2 cup sugar

8 ounces unsalted butter, cold and cut into small chunks

2 egg yolks

1/4 cup heavy cream

In a large bowl, place the flour and sugar.  Blend in the butter with your hands.  Mix the yolks and cream.  Add to flour-butter mixture and knead until smooth.  Chill for at least 30 minutes efore lining tart molds.

Line tart molds and chill (for the chocolate bourbon tart, we're using a 3 to 3 1/2 inch diameter round molds, about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 inches tall).  Dough should be about 1/4 inch thick lining the mold, and should stand above the mold edge a bit.  Weight the dough (dry beans or rice in parchment works well), and blind bake at 350 F until light brown, about 15 to 20 minutes.  After cooling, remove the weights, and the filling of your desire can be added.

Savory pastry dough

Same as above with substitutions:

1 tablespoon salt

reduce sugar to 1 tablespoon

zest of one lemon

1/4 teaspoon pepper

The dough can be kept refridgerated for up to 20 days, but may discolor after about 4 days.  You can freeze the dough virtually forever.

Chocolate bourbon filling

1/4 teaspoon salt

6 whole eggs

2 cups sugar

4 tablespoons butter - melted

1 1/2 cups light corn syrup

1/2 cup molassis - unsulfered

2 teaspoons vanilla

1/2 cup bourbon whiskey

bittersweet chocolate chips

lightly crushed pecans

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl.  Drop a few chocolate chips into the bottom of the tart shell, and add some of the crushed pecans (these amounts can be up to your own personal taste).  Fill the tart shell with the bourbon mixture.  Bake at 350 F for 25-30 minutes.

This recipe makes quite a lot of dough and filling.  But rest assured that the finished product will keep very well for several days, probably up to a week