Mocaccina tart

• 90 minutes to prepare • 50 minutes to cook • 1 hour to cool down • Serves 10

Life happens. Chocolate helps.

 

Chocolate. The all-consuming passion.
Warm, sophisticated, dispenser of cuddles...chocolate is adorable!

There are those who can live without it, those who can resist his intriguing and seductive charm. There are those who are absolute slaves of it.
I love chocolate. I do not abuse it. I can resist it even if it is tempting. But sometimes, when the desire arises, I cannot hold up against it!
Guilty feelings and weight scale ghosts are not able to ruin that moment of sublime and compelling abandonment. Fortunately for my figure, it does not happen every day.
One thing is certain, dough: chocolate looks at everybody, waits for everybody, winks at everybody...

I want to warn you, victims of chocolate: today’s cake recipe requires a luxurious and all-encompassing exposure to chocolate. Sight, taste, smell, touch, hearing...all the senses are involved.
You must first unwrap the chocolate. And you cannot open its thin aluminum blanket without being stunned by its scent, which will make you even more sensitive. The color of chocolate is transgressive itself: its dark nuance is similar to the color of soil, the same soil in which children get dirty. Dirt for which they are scolded, dirt as symbol of disobedience.
Then, you will have to break it up into small pieces, touching its smooth, polished surface, and listening to its dull "tac" sounds, when grooves cede to the pressure of your fingers.
Finally you taste it...beautiful, good, soft, round...with a bitter touch, given by the sentiment of culpability which takes over after so much pleasure.

The recipe - obviously? – is by Ernst Knam. Mocaccina cake. So named because of the subtle coffee flavor of the chocolate cream.
Orgasmica, he would say.

Here are ingredients for a 10-serving recipe (24-cm diameter baking pan):

 

For the pastry

200 g flour 00
125 g sugar
125 g butter
40 g cocoa powder
1 egg
1/2 sachet vanilla baking powder
salt

For the custard

3 egg yolks
1 vanilla bean
250 g  cow milk 
50 g sugar
25 g potato starch
30 g instant soluble coffee

For the dark chocolate ganache

150 g fresh milk cream
300 g chopped milk chocolate

For the white chocolate ganache

100 g fresh milk cream
200 g chopped milk chocolate

1. Start preparing the pastry: cut the butter into cubes and place it in a bowl. Add sugar, a pinch of salt and knead it quickly
2. Stir in the egg, and mix again. Then, add flour, cocoa powder and vanilla baking powder, all sifted. Knead it again
3. Form a ball, wrap it with plastic wrap and let it rest in the refrigerator for 1 hour
4. When we are close to the the 1-hour resting time of the pastry, preheat oven to 180°C
5. Move on to the custard preparation: pour the milk into a saucepan with the vanilla pod - engraved lengthwise - and bring to a boil
6. Meanwhile, beat eggs with sugar until stiff for about 15 minutes
7. Incorporate sifted potato starch to the mixture. Whisk well
8. Pour everything into the saucepan with the hot milk. Let the custard to thicken over medium heat, stirring constantly to avoid lumps
9. Pour the custard into a bowl and sprinkle with granulated sugar to prevent skin from forming over the surface. Let it cool down
10. Grease and dust the baking pan with cocoa powder, then cover bottom and sides with the pastry cut into a flattened disc-shape, about 5 mm thick
11. Start preparing the dark chocolate ganache: pour the milk cream into a small saucepan and place it over medium-low heat for a few minutes. Keep an eye on the cream — it's not necessary to boil it. It just needs to get hot: the cream is ready when you can place a finger in the cream and keep it there for 3 to 4 seconds. Turn off the flame and remove the cream from the stove
12. Scoop the chopped dark chocolate into the cream. Stir gently to distribute the chocolate through the cream and let it sit for a few minutes to give the chocolate time to soften and melt. Finally, stir again with a wooden spoon, then let the mixture to cool down
13. Mix well the chocolate ganache with the custard and pour the obtained chocolate custard into the pastry pan (keep aside just a couple of spoons for the decoration). Level well
14. Bake the cake at 180° for 50 minutes. (Do not open the oven for at least the first half of the baking time and perform the toothpick test at the end, to be sure baking is done)
15. Meanwhile, prepare the white chocolate ganache: follow the same procedure as for the dark chocolate ganache - steps 11 to 12 - just replacing the dark chocolate with the white chocolate
16. When the cake has cooled down completely, transfer it on a serving platter. Then, pour the white chocolate mustard on top of the dark chocholate custard and level well
17. To create the decor, take a small piece of parchment paper and make a paper cone for icing (you can follow this easy step-to-step wikihow tutorial). Fill it with the dark chocolate custard you kept aside and distribuite it randomly on the cake surface
18. Take a toothpick and free the Jackson Pollock hidden inside you. There is no instruction here, just mix the white and the dark chocolate and try to create a nice pattern. When you are done, place the cake in the fridge and let it rest for one hour...once the cake surface has thickened, your masterpiece is ready!

Nutrition Facts are detailed in the table below. Data is provided per serving.

"There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end. He didn't mean as a compliment but it was."
(Jackson Pollock)