Mexican Chocolate Pecan Tart
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This tart, baked in a fluted French tart pan, is my take on a classic American pecan pie made with Mexican chocolate — rustic-textured dark chocolate redolent of cinnamon. Use Ibarra or other Mexican chocolate sold in tablets. Pecans are indigenous to Mexico, as are cocoa and vanilla — so this is, at its heart, a binational dessert.
To make the dough, combine the flour, sugar and salt in a medium bowl. Add the butter and pinch each of the butter pieces into the flour with your hands until all of the butter is coated in the dry ingredients and the dough starts to become shaggy. Add the egg yolk and water and combine with your hands to form a dough with some chunks of butter visible. Press the dough into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours to chill and up to 2 days.
To make the tart shell, roll out the dough to about 2 inches larger than the tart pan all around. Fold the dough in half and lift it onto the tart pan; unfold it to line the pan and press the dough into the creases, letting the excess flop over the sides. Use your thumb to pinch the dough off around the edge of the pan. If there are any holes or thin areas, use the scraps to patch and fill them in. Refrigerate the tart shell while you make the filling.
To make the filling, adjust the oven racks so one is in the lowest position and heat the oven to 325 degrees. Spread the pecans on a baking sheet and lightly toast them in the oven until they’re fragrant and darken slightly, about 6 to 8 minutes. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool to room temperature.
Increase the oven temperature to 450 degrees.
Melt the chocolate and butter together in a small saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring often. Turn off the heat and set aside until the mixture cool enough to touch.
Whisk the eggs, corn syrup, vanilla and salt together in a large bowl. Add the chocolate and butter and stir to combine. Stir in the pecans.
Remove the tart shell from the refrigerator and put it on a baking sheet. Pull out the lowest rack of the oven and place the baking sheet with the tart shell on it. Pour the filling into the shell so that it comes up to the rim of the crust and gently push the rack back in. (If you have leftover filling, bake it in a custard cup to snack on, or discard it.)
Lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees.
Bake the tart until the filling is set and the crust is deep golden brown, about 1 hour, rotating the baking sheet halfway through the baking time so the tart bakes evenly. (The filling will have puffed up to about double its size.) Remove the baking sheet from the oven and set aside for at least 4 hours before slicing.
