Loud face

One of my favourite people in the world has a phrase called "loud face":  It's when your face speaks the truth before your brain or mouth have time to censor it.  For example, I wandered into her room one day and casually asked if my outfit looked ok.  Before a polite and diplomatic, "Umm...yes" could even form on her lips, her face was screaming, "Nooooooooooo. I think I'd go back to the wardrobe and spend a bit more time on it this morning, friend."  Welcome to loud face.  It cannot lie.

But not all loud faces are negative.  One rainy day in Geneva in 2008, I ate a slice of chocolate tart.  The crust was salty, the filling was rich and sweet.  It must have activated a loud face potent enough to strip the mind of concious thought, because I literally stopped my conversation mid-sentence and couldn't remember what I had been talking about.  Again, loud face never lies.

Which brings me to week three of pastry/tart crust trials, and today's bake-off: Chocolate tart. 

I combined a Swedish pastry recipe (a sweet dough that uses melted buter) with a chocolate filling from my Tartine book, and the result was a SUPER-rich tart with a crumbly crust that tasted almost like shortbread.  Although somewhat different to my Geneva experience, it was pretty darn tasty! 










Now in true Wednesday Baking Day style, things still went wrong.  The filling was slightly undercooked and consequently had some wobble-tendencies. To photograph it, a quick shutter speed was of-the-essence, so as to snatch the shot before the tip of the wedge slumped over to leave a rather unattractive brown smudge on the plate...
  





And in an act of anti-buttering arrogance, I had proclaimed myself 'above' need to grease the pie tin.  Which of course meant that large chunks of the pastry stuck fast to the bottom of the dish, and gentle encouragement to remove it only resulted in instantaneous crumbling.

Which brings me to my final thought: I am thinking of renaming this blog "The First Pancake".  You know how the first pancake is always a bit of a flop, in spite of all that joyous expectation?  But you still eat it, and they all get better from then on, of course.  But it seems to kind of fit with my Wednesday baking experiences.  Thoughts?

Have a great week friends!

xx Leah