Queen of Tarts

We had Thanksgiving last night because, as I have mentioned previously, my family cares little when the actual holiday is, and because Joel and I were in Whistler on actual-Thanksgiving with his family (Whistler on a sunny day is puppy-central and I petted all the ones).

Ok and at BEA I picked up this Pies and Tarts cookbook:

It's round (der) and every page spread has a recipe on the left and then a PICTURE OF THE ENTIRE PIE on the right.  I freaking love food pictures (and you are like, Really.), so I also got this cookbook in the Pizzas edition (same deal, but pizzas).  It was so hard for me to not grab All The Cookbooks at BEA because even though I don't really USE them (I have an internetz, after all), I find them so aesthetically pleasing.

Anywert, yesterday I pulled out my Pies and Tarts to find something to make for dessert, finally settling on a chocolate mousse tart.  Chocolate mousse, I could drink you with a spoon!

Also, there were raspberries at the store, and they did not cost a million moneys.

But ok, the mousse part took, like, an hour, and had eleventy ingredients, and there was a lot of stirring in a double boiler over barely simmering water, and whipping and folding in and then whipping of other things and folding those in, and it was very delicious but very rich and also the recipe made maybe twice as much as necessary.

I'm not totally sure what to do with all that leftover mousse.

And then the frostingy bit to go 'round the outside was just whipped cream with cocoa powder and some powdered sugar.  It took maybe three minutes, and was nothing like as heavy, OH AND ALSO WAS AMAZING.

What I'm saying is, for lazier days I will definitely just whip some three-ingredient faux-mousse and pour it on an oreo crust.  Hey presto.

Edited to add: tart was very good yesterday, but exponentially better the next day.  Maybe because I haven't spent the previous three hours 'sampling for quality' and 'making myself sick.'