A Sweet For Some Treats

Throughout my adult years, I have, for one reason or another, spent quite a fair bit of time in London. Thus, over the years, I have come to love several things about Britain's capital city, like for example, Walkers crisps. Yes, I am indeed a junk food junkie and personally, nothing beats sitting in front of the tele with a pack of Walkers crisps and a bubbly sugary drink. So when my good neighbour Tom told me he was heading back to his hometown for a short spell, I begged him to bring back a few packets of my favourite Prawn Cocktail flavoured Walkers Crisps. The dear, dear man obliged.

And so last weekend, Tom turned up at my door bearing a pastic bag full of my favourite junk food. I could have kissed him, except C was standing right next to me. Once I accepted the bag of salted calories, wolfed down a pack and put the rest aside for later, I set about making Tom and his wife Kate a suitable thank you gift.

As usual, I went with my foolproof, always impressive Bitter Chocolate Tart -- it's super easy to make, yet elegant and extremely and, well, impressive. Its base is made from either ground Marie or Digestives biscuits and melted butter (yup, a cheesecake base, essentially). Once that's been shaped in a tart tray and refrigerated, I fill it with a chocolate ganache made with the best dark chocolate available in my cupboards (there's always dark chocolate in my cupboards) and thickened heavy cream. The ratio of cream to chocolate is 1:1. Which means if you use 150 grams of chocolate, then you mix it with 150ml of heavy or thickened cream. You simply chop up the chocolate, bring the cream to a boil, and then pour the cream over the chocolate and let it steep for about 30 seconds. The chocolate will melt under the heat of the cream and you then stir it all together to mix it into a shiny homogenous mixture. Pour that into the tart shell and refrigerate again. Two hours later, voila, a bitter chocolate tart that's as good as, if not better than, any patisserie-bought version.