ExtraVeganza Raspberry-Chocolate Tart!

Hello, have you missed me?

I’m glad to be back on this Meatless Monday ~ or Plantaardig Maandag in Dutch. :) And even though I have a backlog of three bentos to post, I’m going to share a slice of the luxurious raspberry-chocolate pie I made for Easter!

It’s so good I will definitely make this over and over again! Mind you, I’m not even that much of a chocolate lover… But the flavours of this torte complement each other so well: a sugarless cake bottom with bitter-sweet (FairTrade) chocolate and the tartness of fresh raspberries. Need I say more? YUM!

It’s originally a recipe from the Belgian Vegetarian Association EVA but instead of making 6 small pastries I decided to make one big pie (with some other small adaptations). So far I have only made three recipes from the EVA website: birthday brownies (served 3 times), marvellous mayonnaise (I never go without) and now this tart. Obviously they are all a hit! So I guess I should take an even better look at that site. :)

Now the baking of this pie does take a bit of patience… It’s not a lot of work (!), but there’s waiting time in between stages. Personally, I rather saw that as an advantage! I made the cake, which is the most time-consuming part, the night before (or actually 2 ;), the chocolate filling on Easter morning and I added the topping -raspberries and powdered sugar- just before serving at teatime. That was a fun job to do with our little helper cousin.

Of course the adults decided to have some prosecco wine instead of tea with this indulgent treat. :P

Raspberry-Chocolate Tart

Serves 10.
Dutch translation at the bottom of this post.

Ingredients

Pastry shell:

• 250 g all-purpose flour
• 125 g soy butter
• a pinch of salt
• 1-4 tbsp soy milk

Chocolate filling:

• 300 g dark chocolate (vegan and preferably FairTrade, like Tony’s Chocolonely), broken into small parts
• 50-75 g soy butter
• 150 ml vanilla soy milk
• 2 tbsp maple syrup
• 60 g raspberry jam

Finishing touch:

• 500 g raspberries (extra if they are really big)
• powdered sugar

Preparation

Stage 1: pastry shell
Can be made up to 2 days in advance.

1. Grease a 25 cm pastry tin and/or cover the bottom with baking paper.
2. Mix flour, salt and ‘butter’ (125 g) by hand to make a crumbly pastry dough.
3. Add soy milk spoon by spoon until the mixture holds together well, like shortbread dough.
4. Roll out pastry dough, forming a circle big enough to cover bottom and sides of your pastry tin. I cover my working counter with a flexible silicon baking sheet, put the dough on, cover with baking paper and use my rolling pin over that.
5. Put the flattened dough into the tin – here’s where a silicon sheet comes in handy! :)
6. Press well into the sides: you can use a bit of the dough in cling-wrap to do this easily. Cut off any extra dough.
7. Use a fork to make holes in the bottom and put the dough into the refrigerator until it feels firm. This takes at least 30 minutes – I just went out to do my holiday grocery shopping. :) You can put it in the fridge if you’re pressed for time.

Baking

1. Preheat oven to 190°C.
2. Cover the pastry dough with a little baking paper (recycle the piece you used for rolling the dough) and fill with pie weights or whatever you use for blind baking.
3. Prebake in the oven for 25-30 minutes: keep a close eye on from 15 minutes onwards. Remove weights and paper and bake for another 15 minutes until light golden.
4. Take from the oven and let it cool.

Stage 2: filling

1. Melt the chocolate Bain-Marie on low temperature (you know how to do this, right?).
2. Add butter bit by bit (keep stirring to mix well), vanilla soy milk and maple syrup. It may seem that the chocolate is forming clumps but everything will be all right if you keep stirring carefully.
3. When everything is mixed well and creamy you can start filling your pie! First get the pastry shell out of the tin though. :)
4. Cover the bottom of the pie with raspberry jelly.
5. Add the chocolate filling.
6. Let it cool at room temp for approximately 2 hours (or more).

Stage 3: finish

1. When you’re ready to eat you can layer the chocolate with fresh raspberries.
2. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve.

Stage 4: Bon appétit!

Advertentie

I Made This! What Vegans Eat: Chocolate-Beetroot Pie (MoFo #9)

So. I promised to show you my animal friendly chocolate-beetroot pie once it was finished. Drumroll please..! :)

The recipe for this delicious-looking cake came from the Ecofabulous cookbook I mentioned earlier in my Cookbook Sunday Salon. It’s one of the reasons I had to bail out of the 24 Hour Readathon today! But there are worse things. Like, if this pie doesn’t taste as good as it looks.. :(

I deviated from the recipe only in its final stage, applying a couverture instead of the chocolate topping described by Lisette Kreischer. Baking time also took a while longer. In the end I didn’t dare keep it in the oven for a minute more, as I feared it would burn. Now I hope it’s got no soggy bottom ‘cause I couldn’t take British Bakeoff judge Mary Berry’s look of disapproval. ;P

This cake is part of a present for Mr Gnoe’s foodie cousin, celebrating her 40th birthday tonight. I hope she’ll like it! She’s baking a (non-vegan) lime pie, carrotcake muffins, brownies and cheesecake herself right this minute. With a little help from a friend, I believe. ;)

I better not forget to take a photo of a slice tonight! Please remind me? There’s twitter, whatsapp, 4square.. Whatever social medium you like. ;)

With the risk of overdoing it, here’s another pic of the pie ready to go. See you later!

This food-related post is part of Beth Fish’s Weekend Cooking!

Savoury Summer Picnic Pie

With our CSA veggies from Amelis’Hof comes a leaflet, de Amelisbode, usually containing a recipe for some of the week’s vegetables. This week it’s a savoury ‘Picnic Pie’ with oven-roasted garlic, tomatoes and rosemary. I only had to substitute the anchovies to make it vegan/vegetarian! The rosemary came from the herb garden on our balcony.

This recipe is definitely a keeper so I’d like to share it with you for Beth Fish’s Weekend Cooking and the Whip Up Something New! challenge (which I’m hosting this month btw). It’s the ultimate summer pie! And since I made a few more adaptations I feel it’s okay to rename it. :)

Amelis’Hof Summer (Picnic) Pie with Garlic and Tomatoes

Ingredients
Serves 2.

• olive oil
• 3 sun-dried tomatoes
• 1 head of garlic
• 350 gr tomatoes
• 1 small or 1/2 big red onion
• 3 sheets of vegan puff pastry
• 12 black olives
• 1 tbs caper berries
• 1 tbs of chopped rosemary
• (optional) some chopped oregano or other fresh herb of you choice
• freshly ground salt & pepper

Preparation

1. Preheat oven at 200 degrees Celsius.
2. Soak sun-dried tomatoes in hot water.
3. Separate garlic cloves — leave the skin on! — and put them in some olive oil in a high oven-proof dish.
   
4. Cut tomatoes in thick slices, put them in an oven dish.
5. Slice red onion and add to tomatoes.
6. Pour a tablespoon of olive oil over the tomato-onion mix, and add some freshly ground salt & pepper.
   
7. Roll out pastry dough and fill baking dish, punching a few holes in the bottom with a fork. Layer with beans or ceramic beads for pre-baking.
   Whatever you’re using for blind baking; it’s always smart to put some parchment paper in first to prevent your beans/beads from sticking to the dough… I often forget. ;)
   
8. Put all three dishes in the oven and bake puff pastry for 10 minutes, tomatoes and garlic  15 minutes.
9. In the meantime mince olives, caper berries (you may want to rinse these first if they’re really salty) and soaked sun-dried tomatoes.
10. After 10 minutes take your pie dough out of the oven, remove blind filling and bake for another 5 minutes.
11. Now your tomatoes, garlic and puff pastry should be ready at about the same time. Allow the roasted garlic to cool for a few minutes.
12. Peel the garlic cloves, mince, and mix HALF of it with the olives, sun-dried tomatoes and capers.
    
13. Spread the mixture on the bottom of your pie, layer with tomatoes and onion, add rosemary (& other fresh herbs of your choice) and the rest of the crushed garlic. Sprinkle with a little more salt & pepper.
    
14. Put your picnic pie into the oven for another 5-10 minutes.

BON APPETIT!

We had this quiche accompanied by a green salad with asparagus, more fresh herbs from our ‘garden’ (thyme & oregano), chopped walnuts & pistachios and a balsamic vinegar dressing with extra virgin olive oil, agave syrup, salt and pepper. I’m afraid the picture has a weird colour: we had the shades down because it was so sunny!

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Post submitted to…

& Part of Zesty Palette’s ongoing Bake Fest #4 hosted by Tomato Blues