Chocolate Chestnut Tart.

Do you still have Christmas hanging around a bit? I do- mainly kitchen-wise. I have mooost of a Christmas cake, a WHOLE stollen, a Terry's chocolate orange (well, half), chocolate, chocolate, treats and chocolate. 

Now don't get me wrong, this is in nooooo way a bad thing. I love to feel stocked up, especially in treats, and I love Christmas so much that it can linger for as loooong as it likes. But this week I had a GIANT spring clean, well it started off giant, and with giant intentions, but I ran out of steam by the time I'd finished the kitchen...so by the time I got to the bathroom...well, anyhoo, it still feels kind of fresh and like it's a 'starting over' time of sorts. In Christmas leftover world, this translates to 'munch all the treats' time. *Happy Days*

First stop-chestnuts. Not strictly Christmas leftovers; I've had chestnut puree lurking at the back of the freezer for far too long, but they belong to Christmas and space in the freezer belongs to New Year's fresh start.

So Chocolate Chestnut Tart it is. Who knew leftovers could be quite so fancy. With Love and Cake.

Chocolate Chestnut Tart

A few notes:

• Serve with brandy cream, or even scrummyer, brandy mascarpone.
• If you have sweetened chestnut puree, you don't need to add the sugar to the mix. And if you want to up the chestnut factor even further you could add some chopped cooked chestnuts, or even some marron glace, maybe Granny left some lying around.

Makes 1 18cm tart

You will need

1 18cm tart or cake tin, well greased and floured

250g shortcrust pastry, I'm afraid I used shop bought but if you fancy making your own, pop on over to here and Delia will sort you out

For the filling

150g cream cheese

300g chestnut puree

2tbsp icing sugar

1 nice splosh brandy (optional)

For the topping

100g dark chocolate

1 tbsp double cream

1 level tbsp golden syrup

• Preheat your oven to 180°c.
• Roll out your pastry to a nice thin few mm and press tightly into your tin.
• Trim off the excess and prick all over the base with a fork.
• Now you need to blind bake, which means bake the pastry case without any filling, so put a big piece of baking paper over and inside the pastry case so you can fill with baking beads, or dried rice or beans; just something nice and heavy, without them touching the pastry.
• Bake the pastry for 20-25 minutes, until starting to turn golden and firm. If any parts of the base have risen and puffed up poke them back down again by pricking with a fork.
• While that cools you can get on with the filling. It's easy, just beat all the ingredients together and pour into the pastry case. 
• Bake for 45 minutes, when the filling should look just set, with still a hint of wibblewobble left.
• While the tart is cooling you just need to melt together the topping ingredients, either in a double boiler or slowlyslowly in a microwave.
• Pour over the chestnut layer and leave for a little bit to set.
• In fact, if you can resist it for a bit, this tart, well the filling at least, seems to get a little better after a few hours chilling in the fridge. Good luck.