Well, my daughters are downstairs making noises that I hope I never hear again ... well ... at least until they're married!

We have a new favorite for the girls and Becky sends her thanks to Marcia for this week's selection.

Pictures to follow.

Tell Becky she's welcome. David is also excited that this weekend there will be something with chocolate in the house .

Oh, man. I need to spend the weekend working on end-of-year stuff--but it sounds like I should take a baking break for this one.

I'm coming home on Monday and I'm looking forward to catching up with all the baking I've missed.

Since it's too late to edit the post above, let me just say that there is the most divine scent of chocolate wafting through our house this morning, or oops, this afternoon. Like Kim, pictures later.

My tart crust is chilling right now. I can't wait to smell the chocolate...I'm singing the song "Anticipation". I'm using a new chocolate in the tart that I'll be writing about on my blog in a couple of days-called Askinosie Chocolate.

Word of warning to those who haven't made their tart yet-be sure and use fine, or instant polenta, or even regular corn meal. I couldn't find instant polenta, so I used some cornmeal I had. It was from the bulk food section, and more coursely ground than regular cornmeal. My tart is still in the oven, but I had leftover dough and I baked that up into little cookies, and the cornmeal grind is too large. It doesn't make for a nice texture, but instead one that feels like little uncooked pieces of something in the cookie. I used regular cornmeal in the filling, but I know the texture in the tart shell is going to make this a sub-par example of the tart. But I still can't wait to taste-the batter filling tasted fantastic before it was cooked.

Cindy,

I know what you mean - I made the tart crust for another recipe back when I first got the book and did the same thing with the polenta - it was ok, but definitely coarser. Yesterday, having made the chocolate tart with fine polenta, I could really tell the difference in texture.

Again, pictures later. My daughter told me, though, that she thought the tart was "restaurant material"; quite the compliment. We only have leftovers because we were all out last night.

Had a nice slice of the tart last night. As I mentioned earlier, I used too course of a polenta/cornmeal in my crust, but other than that the tart is extremly good. Sometimes chocolate tarts don't have the depth of flavor that you would hope for -this one definitely does. I did use really good chocolate, so I'm sure that made a difference. More results are posted on my blog and tomorrow there will be a post about the chocolate I used.

Here's a picture:

And this: credit to my sous chef, David, this week for the cream whipping.

Okay - we're back (sorry for the picture quality).

These all look so good, fellow bakers! I'm in a time crunch presently, with only two more sleeps til my Croatia trip. I think I may have to defer this tart until I return, but it looks like something I won't want to miss.

I didn't get to bake this week because of our little mini-trip. But, I don't want to miss out on this recipe, so I'm doing it next week along with Marta's cookie selection.
Next Sunday is going to be chocolate overload at our house!

I am sorry I'm so tardy on this one. I baked it last Saturday and have been in such a whirlwind of activities that I'm just now updating my blog and posting this picture.

Marcia, I am so glad you picked this. It was absolutely fabulous. As you can see I made them as a number of mini tarts instead of one big one and that made them quite easy to eat! I will definitely be making this again.

-Krista

Krista, I'm going to have to go read your blog entry to figure out how you made the tartlets. I'm guessing a ravioli roller.

Nope, no ravioli roller, just pressed the dough into individual mini tart pans (I really should have taken a picture of them) as evenly as I possibly could. The fluted edges are from the pans, so that part was easy. Each mini tart was a couple of bites... of delicious!

-Krista