Chocolate cake. French dessert

How to make a chocolate cake to the French style . Today I am going to surprise you with a great classic of French pastry: the “tarte au chocolat” , one of the most famous sweet recipes of our French neighbors.

For many generations this type of dessert has triumphed for its simplicity, texture and flavor. Its flavor delights young and old, you can even prepare it with the kids at home. Its appearance is so good that no diet can resist the temptation, the fact that the test cannot refuse to try a second piece is almost addictive.

This great kitchen classic, which can be found in all pastry shops in France, combines several ingredients that make it unbeatable: a dense and powerful chocolate cream on a crisp base of shortcrust pastry .

Compared to the original recipe, I have reduced the amount of ganache and the shortcrust pastry is homemade. With which we control the crispy touch to the maximum, more balanced proportions to be able to add the M & M’s and that the contribution of more chocolate looks great. Cheer up! I leave you with the preparation of the cake, I hope you like it.

Preparation of the base of the chocolate cake. Broken mass

1. We preheat the oven to 200º C. If you want to make the broken pasta at home I leave you this simple recipe .
2. We stretch the dough and cover a round mold, I recommend that you use a 24cm diameter circular stainless steel mold (“cercle”) and a tad less than 2cm in height, if you do not have it, you can use a removable one. It is important for the shortcrust pastry to be super crispy.
3. We cover the base with baking paper and put raw vegetables on top. It is to prevent bubbles from forming under the dough during baking.
4. Bake the base for approximately 10-15 minutes at 180º C until toasted.
5. Remove the paper and legumes, grease the base with a little butter and leave another 5 more minutes in the oven on the tray. This way we will make the base crispy. We remove from the oven and let cool before filling.
6. Once the shortcrust pastry base is cold, spread with a little jam of your choice. I have used a homemade strawberry that is great for chocolate, but it can also be orange or berries, for example. We reserve.

Preparation of the chocolate ganaché and final presentation of the chocolate cake

We prepare the chocolate ganaché with your favorite chocolate, I use one 70% cocoa.

1. The easiest way to make our filling cream is to mix the same amount of chocolate as whipping cream. That is, for example 200 gr. dessert chocolate with 200 ml. of whipping cream.
2. But to achieve a better result we must look at the percentage of cocoa that the chocolate has, since the amount that we will need will depend on it. Since in this case it has a little more cocoa, we use a little more liquid cream.
3. We break the chocolate into very small pieces with a good knife or a mincer, and place it in a bowl or large bowl.
4. We boil the cream and pour it in two batches on top of the chocolate, moving with the rods little by little until obtaining a homogeneous mixture.
5. The consistency of the ganache cream depends on the relationship between the cream and the coating. The more chocolate you have, the greater its consistency.
6. Finally add the pieces of butter while continuing to beat. Once we have the cream ready, we can already use it to fill our cake.
7. We pour over the shortcrust pastry that we have previously baked and that has rested 10 minutes out of the oven.
8. We let it cool in a cool place without humidity, important that it is not the fridge .
9. We decorate with the chocolate candies to taste, let the children of the house improvise and make the cake for them.

Here you have it, I hope you like it, Voilà!