Chocolate mousse tart with chocolate crust {vegan}

(cliccate qui per la versione italiana)

Happy Monday everyone! Happy Valentine’s Day if you celebrate it. I was just thinking that the first two weeks of February have the highest concentration of chocolate-anything recipes each year and I thought why not add to it? Like the world needs any more choc desserts? Why yes it does. Actually I don’t need any excuse to eat chocolate (such as Valentine’s Day) as I have it in some form or another every single day! Usually – when I don’t have homemade cake or cookies, which luckily I don’t make too often – I eat one or two pieces of an extra dark bar.

I’ll tell you how this chocolate mousse tart came to be: I love white sweet potatoes very much because they taste almost like sweet chestnuts, and I wanted to try and make a custard-like cream out of them. The problem was that, after cooking (both baking and steaming), the flesh never stayed completely white, and in the end I was left with a greyish mousse that tasted amazing but alas did not resemble anything custard like…neither white nor yellow unfortunately! So I decided that “chocolate solves all problems” and went for a chocolate mousse tart instead haha!! It worked really well.

I made this a few months ago and decided to share it only now (I forgot about it, silly me -.-) It’s really yum and also fool-proof easy! Happy chocolat-ing!

CHOCOLATE MOUSSE TART WITH CHOCOLATE CRUST {vegan}
by Marta Giaccone

Recipe
one 26cm/10,2in tart
prep time: 10 mins, cooking time: 1 hr, total time: 1 hr 10 mins

Crust
1+1/3 cups / 200 gr flour of choice
2 tbsp + 1 tsp / 15 gr cacao powder
½ tsp baking powder
pinch salt
¼ cup / 50 gr light vegetable oil
¼ cup / 50 gr water
¼ – 1/3 cup / 70-80 gr sugar (I used brown)

Method

1. Add sugar and water to a small pot over low heat for a couple of minutes stirring constantly in order to let the sugar dissolve. Don’t bring to a boil.
2. Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl and stir.
3. Add oil and sugary liquid over dry ingredients and mix really well to incorporate.
4. Knead the dough for a few minutes until smooth.
5. Wrap in plastic and let rest in the fridge for about an hour.

Filling
350 gr cooked or raw sweet potatoes (I used the white kind)
1 cup / 250 ml plant-based milk
25 gr corn starch (or other kind of starch)
3 tbsp cacao powder
4 tbsp maple syrup (or other liquid sweetener)
pinch vanilla
pinch cinnamon
zest of one lemon

Method

1. Cook the sweet potatoes by either slicing in half lengthwise and baking cut side facing down at 200°C/400°F for about 30 minutes or by peeling and chopping them up and steaming them.
2. Keep the oven on/turn it on at 200°C/400°F.
3. Add starch to 50 ml of the milk and quickly stir to let it dissolve.
4. Add remaining milk, starch liquid, cooked potatoes and all other filling ingredients to a food processor and blend.
5. Take dough from the fridge and onto a working surface. Roll it out between two sheets of parchment paper (optional) to about 4mm thick. Transfer dough (along with bottom layer of paper) into a tart pan, prick with a fork, then add the chocolate filling.
6. Bake for 30 minutes, then remove from oven and let cool completely. It’s actually so much better refrigerated the next day!