Warm Chocolate and Banana Tart Pound Cake for Dorie's Birthday

Photo Source: Desserts by Pierre Herme

It is Dorie Greenspan's birthday today, so our French Fridays with Dorie group is celebrating by each making a recipe from one of Dorie's books.  Hooray! 

 

I have owned Desserts by  Pierre Herme, written by Dorie Greenspan, for around two years and never used it before.  Accordingly, what better book to use for a birthday celebration recipe?  I didn't have the energy or time to make something too complicated, so I chose the Warm Chocolate and Banana Tart, pictured above from the book.  And indeed, that is what I made.  Unfortunately, it slipped out of the fridge, and this is all I have to show you:

 

Yup, a smashed mess.  However, you have no idea how good this smashed mess tasted - I momentarily thought about tossing the thing out and forgetting it ever happened, but once you taste rum-soaked raisins with ooey gooey chocolate ganache and a buttery tart shell, you can't go back.  It tasted devine.  You cannot throw it out - it would be sacrilege. 

I wished fervently that I had a family of four to share this with and dig in with spoons and eat the tart as it was, but alas, there is just me.   I knew that the work crowd was not going to entertain the idea of eating a smashed tart, so I decided to turn the tart into a cake using Dorie's Perfection Pound Cake recipe from Baking- From My Home to Yours.  The end result looked kind of like one of those giant cookies that they sell in the US:
 

 
However, it saved the tart, and I have now made two Dorie recipes for her birthday instead of one.  Here's a peek inside the cake:

This passed the "will I eat it?" test at work, as it all disappeared.  Alas, I know that it did not taste as good as the tart, which I will make again for a special occasion - it was that good.

To make the tart (and I highly recommend that you do), you can find the recipe for the filling online here.  For the tart shell, I just used Dorie's dream sweet tart dough (the book recipe makes too much dough, so I used the recipe out of From Around My French Table which cuts it down to one tart shell). You can get that recipe online from Dorie herself here.  It is a no shrink, no roll recipe - just blitz it in the food processor and press it into the pan.

If you want to make the Perfection Pound Cake on its own rather than to glue together a shattered tart, you can find the recipe here.  I used a half recipe to bind my tart together. 

Happy birthday Dorie!