Chocolate Shortcrust Pastry
Cocoa in pastry does more than flavour it: it replaces part of the flour, which makes the shell shorter and more fragile. So work with it cold and fast. Any filling that plays against bitterness benefits — raspberry, sour cherry, lemon curd, salted caramel. One more advantage: on dark pastry nobody can see it has caught slightly, so you are not chasing a colour with your eye.
- Prep
- 20 min
- Rest
- 1 h
- Total
- 1 h 20 min
- Servings
- 8
- Level
- Easy
- Per serving
- 300 kcal
Ingredients
Makes: One 24 cm tart shell
Shopping list
The ingredients for the servings you chose — copy them or send them to a messenger. Tick what you already have at home: only the rest goes on the list.
Method
Oven
190 °C · top and bottom heat, no fan
With a fan: 170 °C
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Step 1: Sift the dry
Sift the flour, cocoa, icing sugar and salt together. Cocoa loves to clump, and those clumps stay as bitter specks in the baked shell.
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Step 2: Cut in the butter
Add the cold sliced butter and rub it in with fingertips or a pastry blender to pea-sized crumbs. No finer: those pieces are what make it short.
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Step 3: Add the water
Add the ice water a spoon at a time, mixing after each. Stop the moment the dough starts gathering and holds together when you squeeze a handful.
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Step 4: Chill
Shape into a disc, wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour. Warm chocolate pastry tears on the rolling pin more eagerly than most.
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Step 5: Line the tin
Roll between two sheets of baking paper to 3 mm and lift into a 24 cm tin. Press any cracks together with a finger — no patch shows on dark pastry. Prick the base.
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Step 6: Freeze before baking
Put the tin in the freezer for 20 minutes. Frozen pastry does not slump down the sides, which beats any amount of baking weight.
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Step 7: Blind bake
Line with paper, fill with weights and bake at 190 °C for 20 minutes, then lift the weights out and give it 8 minutes more. The shell should feel dry to the touch.
Tips & variations
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Tip
Colour tells you nothing here; the pastry is dark anyway. Go by smell and by touch — a finished shell is dry and firm at the rim.
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Variation
For a softer, more biscuit-like shell replace the water with one egg yolk: closer to a tart pastry than to a pie crust.
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Tip
With a very wet filling, brush the hot shell with egg white and return it to the oven for 2 minutes — the film keeps the base from going soggy.
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Storage
Raw pastry keeps two days in the fridge and two months frozen. A baked shell keeps a day under a tea towel.
Nutrition
| 1 serving | Whole dish 8 servings | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 300 kcal | 2,400 kcal |
| Protein | 4 g | 32 g |
| Fat | 18 g | 144 g |
| Carbohydrates | 31 g | 248 g |
Approximate values calculated from standard ingredient data.
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