Along with 4 million other people, I have been an avid fan of the Great British Bake Off . Though I am a cake baker by trade I do enjoy other types of baking, especially pastry. We are lead to believe that pastry making is an art form only held by a few very talented people. But I believe anyone can give it a good bash. It is basically one step up from making a crumble topping and everyone has made an apple crumble in their primary school years.

Even though I will often make a pie, sweet and savory, I haven’t really delved into the realm of ‘tart’ making. Seeing the contestants making Mary Berry’s Tarte Au Citron reminded me of my trip to Paris last summer. My husband and I managed to sneak a weekend away to Paris sans enfants. Instead of sight-seeing we ended up spending most our time in search of onion soup, bread and cheese. We came across the very fancy food shop Fauchon. If you think of an English fancy food shop it has to be Fortnum and Mason. With their door men, thick carpets, grand staircases, mouldings and art work it is a shop fit for a queen. Very formal, very English. However Fauchon is bold and sharp with its hard floors, monochrome colours and bright pink lighting. Very sexy, very French. Here I had the most delicious tarte au citron. Actually, we brought ourselves a selection of tarts, breads, cheeses and meats to have as a little picnic in front of the Eiffel Tower twinkling in the night-time. Very romantic, very not us!

Since then I have wanted to make my own tarte au citron, but never got round to it until I saw them being made on GBBO. I followed the Mary Berry recipe. I have to say making the pastry was fairly easily. It was all the palaver over trying to line the tin with the pastry and blind baking without it shrinking or cracking that was trying. I was fairly happy with the outcome and it tasted light and scrummy.

After I mastered the lemon tart, it got me thinking about what my ‘signiture bake’, ala GBBO, would be. I went for a chocolate tart. I made a sweet shortcrust pastry and gave it a chocolately hit by replacing some of the flour with cocoa powder. This made the pastry a tad dry as cocoa powder absorbs more moisture than flour. I blind baked the pastry case before making the filling. The filling consisted of melted chocolate and cream with eggs added to firm the texture when baked.

With the tart having a chocolate base and filling I wanted to balance out the richness with a fruit topping and raspberries are perfect for this. For an added dimension I decided to fill the centre of the raspberries with some cream lightly whipped with a spoonful of icing sugar and drop or two of vanilla extract. Using a piping bag with the tip snipped off, I filled the raspberries with this light cream filling.

Once the chocolate tart had cooled I added the raspberries to the top and finished it off with a good dusting of icing sugar.

Fit for a queen? Fit for Mary Berry? I like to think so.