Turkey Day Success

Photo: Marthastewart.com

I have subjected my family to a freakish number of foods that may or may not ever grace our holiday table again.
My favorite freakish food was a clever little asparagus flan recipe that I waded through.  Once your gag reflex has calmed, it really was better than it sounds, though some had issues with the texture.  It is a custardy, flany, eggy concoction with a really tasty fontina cheese sauce.  I liked it best on bread the next day.  If you are feeling like you too need to experience "The Flan" you can find the recipe here, but the reason I bring this up is that this experimental thing is not always about strange savory fare, sometimes it is just about altering a tradition a little. 
Today I am making a Pumpkin-Chocolate Tart, although my earlier incarnation is more like a pie or a torte.  OK, I really don't know the difference......I will be right back........

Torte - rich cake usually covered with cream and fruit or nuts
Tart - prostitute
Oops!  Sorry, wrong definition
Tart - type of pie with an open top not covered with pastry
Pie - dish baked in pastry-lined pan often with a pastry top

Now that I know the definitions I can confidently say that my pumpkin-chocolate was a pie/tart.  Well, it was shaped like a tart with straight sides but it was deep like a pie instead of thinner like most tarts I have seen.  There you have it!

Let's begin.....

The crust is kind of crazy.  It was dry as a bone in my stand mixer and all I added was one egg.  "Yea right!  This is not looking so good..."  I trusted my jedi powers, let the mixer do it's thing, and after about 3-5 minutes the dough suddenly became a cohesive blob.  Whew!  It smells really good and is a beautiful chocolaty color.  It is easy to roll out but you want to make sure that you keep it thin, so as not to overwhelm your tart.  I don't know from personal experience, but I have heard it is impossible to work with an overwhelmed tart.

I had some issue with getting the crust into the pan without it tearing, so I actually cut min crust out and fit it into the pan in pieces.  This worked really well and solved my tearing problems.  Poke your tart....Geez, you  guys have some kind of freaky minds!...with a fork, so it won't bubble when you cook it.  Clean it up people!!  When the crust comes out of the oven, drop in your chocolate chips and give it a minute, they melt pretty quickly and then you can spread them around on the bottom of the crust.

The pumpkin custard is really easy but I left out one step that Martha has that I feel is just a good way to make more work for yourself.  I did NOT strain the custard but if you really want to you can.  I went rogue and devoured all of the "solids" that Martha chucked out.  They were good too! 

The rest of the tart is pretty much standard issue, so I won't go into detail. The only thing that I did differently is that I found that I preferred lots of whip cream to more chocolate drizzled on the top of the pie.  If you want to drizzle, please do.

Pumpkin Chocolate Tart  -  Printable Recipe