‘Life is a bowl of cherries.’
Proverb

It’s May with Megan, my secret partner for the month @ The Secret Recipe Club, the brainchild of the very talented & sweet Amanda of Amanda’s Cookin’. The idea behind the club – Each month you are “assigned” a participating food blogger to make a recipe from. It’s a secret, so don’t tell them you are making something from their blog!I was thrilled to find my April Secret Challenge recipe picked by The Pioneer Woman in her post Web Deliciousness: Strawberries!

Ree was generous with her words. She said “Old Fashioned Eggless Chocolate Cake with Balsamic Strawberry Cream Filling by Passionate About Baking. This is the first time I’ve seen this food blog and the photos are just spectacular, not to mention the treats themselves. Wow.”, and then went on to add another of my posts in the round-up to say”Whipped Strawberry Curd Cream Tartlets with Walnut Shortbread Crust. My, oh my. I don’t know what to say.”

I love Megans blog Megans Cookin’ – Sweet, Savoury, Simple … goes the tagline. Her blog is delicious and we are addicted to her chocolate chip oatmeal snack bars; these are a weekly bake in our home. I have tried them in numerous avatars, with different flour substitutions like whole wheat and buckwheat {in addition to healthy oats in there}, and with different conserves, jams etc {homemade bitter orange marmalade, homemade strawberry vanilla bean conserve, blueberry conserve} …… with chocolate chips, with dark chocolate on top, without dark chocolate on top. They are THAT POPULAR at home and the kids love them! I had made a batch the morning I got a mail from Amanda telling me my secret partner was Megan. Could Amanda have guessed what I had just baked? I couldn’t post the same bars again as I have already done so on PAB. I hadn’t slathered them with dark chocolate this time because the weather is really hot, so I thought I’d use them some other way!Here’s what I did. I ran about 5-6 energy bars in my thermomix and got fine biscuit crumbs. My plan was to use them as a sweet tart base, with a cherry pie filling as cherries are in season here and very very tempting to use! Thought I’d do a bittersweet chocolate filling as in this Bittersweet Chocolate Marquise with Crème Chantilly & Balsamic Cherry Sauce I had recently made.That morning, an ardent local baker, the sweet Nidhi, messaged me literally begging me for a vegetarian something after she had drooled over the Bittersweet Chocolate Marquise. She’s allergic to eggs; I just had to oblige this lovely girl. {BTW, Nidhi, just finished reading the book you got me, and I loved it!}So the filling was rapidly reworked to accommodate Nidhi and her no egg request. You will not believe how delicious this turned out to be!! Finger-licking good, and well set too. Chocolate and cherries, like chocolate and strawberries, are a combination made to please the spirit!For folk with egg allergies or for a vegetarian version, I have an eggless tart recipe in this Whipped Strawberry Curd Cream Tartlets with Walnut Shortbread Crust. You could also use graham crackers or digestive biscuit crumbs.Take a look at the cross section. A filling that was smooth, luscious and sang the dark chocolate cherry song out loud! The diva on diet begged for more, and adamantly had two helpings despite being literally hit on the head and reminded of her diet! The son charmed his way to seconds! The base was full of chocolaty goodness too … a winner of a tart!This time I didn’t cook the cherries into a sauce. I barely simmered them in brown sugar and balsamic vinegar for 1-2 minutes, just to soften them and to help get them a glazed look, then fished them out of the sauce and cooked the syrup to a thick reduction. Oh, I added a dash of lime juice as well to give it a kick. Worked nicely!

 

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Recipe: Nutella & Cherry Chocolate Tart

Summary: A vegetarian filling /chocolate tart filled with deeply luscious dark couverture chocolate and nutella.

Prep Time: 15 minutes
Total Time: 40 minutes
Ingredients:

• 1 sweet chocolate tart base, 9″ {recipe follows, or premade etc}
• 500ml low fat cream, room temperature
• 200gms dark chocolate {I used 55% couverture}
• 2/3 cup Nutella
• 2 tbsp cornflour
• 100gms fresh cherries, pitted, halved

Method:

1. Mix cornflour in 1/2 cup low fat cream.
2. Place remaining cream, dark chocolate and Nutella in a heavy bottom pan, and simmer until the chocolate melts, stirring constantly.
3. Add the remaining cream & cornflour mix and continue to stir until mixture thickens to a batter like texture, thicker than flowing custard.
4. Cool for about 30 minutes. Sprinkle baked tart shell with the pitted and halved cherries. Pour the chocolate mixture over this, level out and chill for at least 3-4 hours, until set. Pour the balsamic cherry topping over, chill for another 30 minutes, remove from pan and serve.

Recipe: Chocolate Tart
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Total Time: 40 minutes
Ingredients:

• 5-6 energy bars {recipe here}, powdered in processor
• 50gms unsalted butter, melted

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Keep a 9″ round tart pan with a removable base ready.
   
2. Mix the cookies crumbs and butter.
3. Turn out into a 9″ tart pan and pat out evenly to cover the base and work into the sides. Mine was uneven on the sides, but the filling merged in later. {Also was not roll-able maybe because of the intense heat}
4. Bake for about 30 minutes. Cool completely on rack. It will firm up when cool. Loosen the shell, and leave it in the tart pan.

Recipe: Balsamic Cherry Topping

Prep Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 10 minutes
Ingredients:

• 100gms fresh cherries, pitted
• 50gms brown sugar
• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Method:

1. Place all the ingredients in a saucepan and simmer for a minute
   
2. Remove the cherries to a bowl, and continue to cook the syrup until reduce and thick. Pour the syrup over the cherries, and cool completely.

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Also find me on The Rabid Baker, The Times of India