Day 26: Passion for Chocolate!

Yesterday, a friend and I tried another of Heston’s fancy fantastical recipes – the Exploding Chocolate Gateaux! A chocolate tart with an exploding tart base and a passion fruit-infused chocolate filling.

From the sound of the recipe, it seems like a tricky dessert. But in reality it is just a ‘Hestonified’ take on a classic ganache tart, so it’s very elegant to look at and taste, but simple to make.

Passion fruit and chocolate - A dream team?

Heston said that passion fruit and chocolate are a dream combination. I couldn’t, for the life of me, imagine how it would taste, since I’d never heard of such a combination before. But it worked well. The passion fruit made the chocolate ganache filling less rich and heavy than it normally would be. And after the initial seductive flavor of the chocolate ganache the citrusy-passion flavor of the fruit emerged, lingering for a few seconds. The flavors complimented each other in a way I couldn’t fully understand even after enjoying a whole tart! Very intriguing...

Passion fruit infused cream

Making the passion fruit infused ganache

I’d say it’s hard to go wrong with this recipe, but I think in the future I’ll have to alter the quantity of cream I add to the ganache because the 1:1 cream to chocolate ratio was imbalanced by the pulp of the passion fruit and so even after 3 plus hours in the fridge the ganache filling never quite set the way it’s supposed to.

I love Heston's childlike glee when he gets to whip out the power tools! And I hope one day I'll also get to use paint guns to spray tiny droplets of molten chocolate onto dessert but for now, I will have to make do with dusting my gateaux with cocoa powder.

All in all I'm definitely going to keep this one up my sleeve for an occasion that calls for wowing!