Yes, this Chocolate Coconut Macaroon Tart/Pie looks quite delicious and cohesive but it is actually one of my finest foodie disasters ever and the screw up is all my fault, totally my bad.
I have been watching Rachel Allen‘s show Bake for a while now and have been completely entranced. There are so few shows dedicated to baking so Bake is a real gem. And so is Rachel! She is so lovely. It is my dream to go study cooking and baking with her at the Ballymaloe Cooker School in Ireland. My mom bought me her cookbook Rachel’s Allen’s Bake for Christmas and so far I over-baked her focaccia and now I bastardized her recipe for her Coconut Macaroon Tart. Here is where the story begins.
As Rachel recommended, I made the tart crust in the food processor. I was a little worried because it is obviously much drier here than in the UK, one egg was not enough to bring the pastry together. I had to add lots of cold water and was worried I had over processed the dough but nope! The pie crust was perfect. When it clumped like this I knew it was time to get it out and make a disc with it and let it chill for 30 minutes.
I did not have a 9″ tart shell but I did have a 9″ pie plate so I used it instead. I greased it, rolled out the dough and transferred it to the plate. I trimmed the dough, covered it with aluminum foil and filled the crust with brown rice to weigh down the dough while it is in the oven. This is called blind baking. After 15 minutes I took out the pie weights, used an egg wash on the bottom of the “tart” and baked through for two minutes.
While the crust was cooling I started to make the filling. Now if you look at Rachel’s original recipe, you will see she only uses 3 eggs. Why did I use 4? Well, it has to do with the butter. See, her recipe’s ingredients list is all in grams, not in measurements of cups. I had no idea when I started making this that I did not have enough butter. I have made many pies before and truly believed I had enough. I did not realize that there would be so much butter in the filling, 4 1/2 oz worth and I only had 3 1/4 oz after making the crust! So, what could I do instead?Add an extra egg. I was not going outside and I wanted that tart darn it! So I gave it a shot.
This part was smart! Rachel recommends putting a layer of raspberry jam on the bottom but I put mini chocolate chips instead. I loved the taste of the chocolate with the coconut and cinnamon, it was shockingly delicious! It definitely had a tropical feel to it that I will pretend is kind of Thai-inspired but that is probably completely inaccurate.
Soup. The filling was completely goopey. This is what the dish is supposed to look like. It has structure and depth, not fluid like a swimming pool. When left to cool it did solidify a little but really, it is a visual disaster.
Or is it? I must admit, this is one of the most delicious disasters of my life. In fact, I think this tart/pie is crazy yummy. Who knew that the chocolate, coconut and cinnamon would go so well together? Not me! Yes, it is runny and falling apart but as long as I get to eat it, I don’t care. I am not a huge one for sweets but I will make an exception for this dessert.
I really hope I get to make one of Rachel Allen’s recipes properly some time soon but it will have to wait until this screwed up tart is all gone and I buy some more butter!
Coconut and chocolate is one of my favorite pairings! I get lovely cocnut macaroon tarts from the bakery. I think all they do is make coconut macaroons in a tart shape and put chocolate on top. I’m not really sure. But whatever they do it is delicious!
That’s too funny. I bombed a recipe the other day, but it was so good that I posted it 🙂
http://muminbloom.blogspot.com/2010/02/recipe-rocky-mountain-peaks-cookies.html
That is by far the best kind of “failure”…!
Your honesty cracks me up. -Tien
i have trouble with transferring cups to grams/ounces! i have shelia lukins USA Cookbook as i fell in love with american food during my many snowboard trips and wanted to recreate the food.
i recently found a set of measuring cups which have been invaluable
All is good as long as it tastes delicious. What an amazing combination, the chocolate chips was a very cool idea. Looks kind of like butter tart filling, looks very sweet and gooey!
Glad it turned out okay even if a little gloopy. I have ‘Bake’ so must go and have a look at this recipe. I find it really amazing that in US you don’t weigh your ingredients esp in baking where the chemistry is so important. Because I am ‘quite old’ lol I can operate in pounds and ounces and grams but only because I have a weighing scale, I now have an electronic scale which means you can zero the scale and keep adding ingredients without doing difficult sums! I also have a set of American Cups so I can cook US recipes.