Sweet cocoa paste

Cocoa pastry :

• You can make this recipe either in your food processor fitted with the leaf (the flat whisk) or by hand in a salad bowl.
• If your butter is too cold and too hard, you'll need to work it a little. It needs to have a “creamy” texture for the dough to be homogenous.
• Sift together the powdered sugar and cocoa powder.
• Pour the butter, powdered sugar, cocoa, salt and almond powder into your bowl. Mix at slow speed to avoid foaming the butter.
• Add the egg and continue mixing. If your dough is not very homogeneous, don't hesitate to use a maryse or a horn to scrape the bottom of your bowl.
• Add the flour and knead at medium speed. It's best to knead as little as possible and stop as soon as the flour is incorporated into the mixture, even if it doesn't form a nice ball of dough.
• The more you mix, the crumblier your dough will be, the harder it will be to work, and the more fragile it will become once cooked.
• Place the dough in cling film. Crush the ball with the palm of your hand to make as flat a disk as possible.
• This will ensure that your dough is compact and roughly in the right shape to roll out, and will chill faster in the fridge.
• Leave your chocolate dough to rest in the fridge for an hour.
• Flour your work surface and your dough, then roll it out, taking care to give it a 1/8 turn between each roll. This ensures that there's always enough flour underneath, and that the dough glides smoothly and doesn't stick to your work surface. It also helps to keep the basic round shape (who hasn't ended up with a square after rolling out their dough?).
• Roll your dough out on your rolling pin and unroll it onto your circle or tart tin. If it breaks, don't panic - the advantage of sweet dough is that it will come together again when baked.
• Take the edge of the pastry that's sticking out of the circle and slide it over, pressing it down with the fingers of your other hand so that it sticks tightly against the edge of the circle. If you push the dough from the inside, it may tear.
• Then, using your fingers, gently push the dough into the circle at a right angle. You've just done what we call “darkening” a tart!
• Finally, with a small knife, cut off the excess pastry by sliding the blade against your circle or tart tin.
• Finally, you'll need to let your tart rest once more in the fridge. This isn't essential, but it will prevent the pastry from shrinking or the edges from falling off during baking, so don't skip this step.
• Preheat your oven to 170°C fan-assisted, prick your tart with a fork to prevent air bubbles from forming during baking and put your pastry in the oven for 15 min.