Chocolate Pumpkin Tart with Cinnamon Whipped Cream from The Vintage Baker

Alrighty then, I’m at it again with another pumpkin dessert. Me, the peep who keeps going on about how ambivalent she feels about pumpkin . . . But here’s the thing: when you host Thanksgiving (and tho I am not doing so this year, I do so most years) and you are into baking and sweets-making (me, again) you kinda/sorta have to bake up a pumpkin pie, or at the very least something resembling a pumpkin pie. Prior to writing my second cookbook, The Vintage Baker, the dessert I made to mimic a traditional pie of the pumpkin variety was a pumpkin mousse tart (or a pumpkin chiffon tart) with a gingersnap crust and lots of billowy whipped cream.
I chose to develop such a light and fluffy and — if I do say so myself — divine pumpkin treat to serve instead of pie because I often find the pumpkin custard filling of a traditional pie just too thick. I wanted something more like pumpkin pudding or mousse filling my crust, not slightly gelatinous (sorry) custard. And I decided to place said light and airy filling in a gingersnap crumb crust because — yum — but also because cookie crumb crusts are easy peasy and I love easy-peasy. But then I wrote The Vintage Baker and because I was forced to include a pumpkin pie-ish recipe in the book (more on that below) I suddenly find myself with a choice of two delicious pumpkin desserts for Thanksgiving — the above mentioned pumpkin mousse tart OR, wait for it, a pumpkin tart with a chocolate cookie crust. You see,  I had no choice but to include a recipe for something pumpkin pie-ish in my book because the book is full of some of the most common “vintage” recipes that I stumbled upon over and over again when researching (via my collection of vintage recipe booklets). And to say I stumbled upon pumpkin pie recipes in my collection is an understatement. 
But here’s the thing, even tho I felt I had to include one — in light of what the research revealed — I did not feel the recipe had to be one for straight up pumpkin pie, and so I developed a tart with a chocolate cookie crust because I love cookie crusts (as I mentioned above), and because I adore the combo of chocolate and pumpkin. And so this is a very long way of saying that now little-old-pumpkin-hating me has two pumpkin pie-ish recipes up her sleeve to pull out on Thanksgiving; and if I love them both, you are guaranteed to feel similarly.

 

 

                                                                                                                                         Photo by: Alice Gao

The recipe is in my book, and if you do not yet own a copy, might I suggest you purchase one. But if that is not in the cards for you in the immediate future and you need to make this tart now (and I feel you on that, by the way), the recipe can be found on Salon

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