Making a choice can be challenging at times, particularly if you have two favorites. Do you want some ice cream? Banana-rama or Forbidden Chocolate, which would you prefer? It’s time to restock on whey protein powder for the weight room. Banana cream or double rich chocolate? Make decisions, make decisions.
Alternatively, if, like me, you can’t decide, how about a little bit of both? After all, that is the reason chocolate banana splits were created. (At least, this is the explanation for which I am most certain.)
This combined with a natural tendency toward laziness (especially around the holidays), has led me to conclude that making a chocolate banana tart is the most sensible and straightforward (not to mention delicious) middle ground.
Easy, but so delicious.
For the ganache, picture a velvety, silky blend of milk and dark chocolate. Ripe, fresh bananas offer a hint of sweetness. If ever a match was made, this one was it. When you have the best of both worlds, why choose just one favorite?
CHOCOLATE BANANA TART
While the main stars are the chocolate and bananas, naturally, one can’t have a tart without making a tart base. To keep things simple (you might have observed this trend if you have read this far), I am employing shortbread biscuits to make the crust.
These have a surprisingly high butter content—after all, it’s the season to celebrate, so go ahead and indulge! However, you can substitute other biscuit varieties as well, such as oatmeal cookies made organically or regular digestives.
Changes keep coming, even to the proportion of chocolates used in the ganache. The one I’m using here has the same amounts of milk and dark chocolate. But you could add more dark chocolate for a more sophisticated look, or more milk chocolate for a lighter version.
In fact, whilst I prefer a super-smooth filling, you can jazz things up a bit by adding chunky peanut butter, pumpkin seeds or coconut flakes. Garnish the finished tart with fresh strawberries or candied orange peel.
Ingredients
300g shortbread biscuits
80g butter, melted
½ teaspoon cinnamon
100g milk chocolate, coarsely chopped
100g dark chocolate (70 percent and above), coarsely chopped
Sea salt to taste
200ml heavy cream
50g butter, cut into small pieces
2 ripe bananas
Method
First, preheat the oven to 200°C. Prepare the crust for the tart by crumbling the biscuits by hand into a mixing bowl. Add melted butter and cinnamon to the biscuit crumbs and mix until well combined.
Transfer this mixture to a 24 centimetres non-stick tart pan, pressing it down to form a thin base. Press the excess mixture up the sides of the pan to create the crust to hold the ganache filling. Bake the tart base in the preheated oven for 15 minutes until it has set. Remove and let it cool completely before adding the filling.
Place the sea salt, milk chocolate, and dark chocolate in a large heatproof bowl and set aside to make the chocolate ganache filling. Heat a nonstick pan and add the butter and heavy cream to a simmer over medium heat. To avoid the dairy solids separating, make sure the mixture is not at a rolling boil.
After adding the cream-butter liquid to the chocolate, stir the mixture and let it sit for about a minute. Stir the ganache continuously until it becomes smooth and all of the chocolate pieces have melted. Put aside to cool.
Make sure there are no big chunks left after mashing the ripe bananas. Blend the chilled chocolate ganache into it until it’s smooth and thoroughly mixed.
Transfer the banana chocolate filling into the tart shell. Place in the fridge. To slice and serve, refrigerate the tart for approximately six hours to allow the filling to solidify.
You can prepare this chocolate banana tart a few days ahead of time. It can be refrigerated for a few more days to prolong its shelf life.
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