A base of butter-coated crumbs clinging to each other, a simple ganache filling, a little stove-top action, but the dial of the main oven remains untwisted; that, to me, is perfection. In this content-saturated world that semiotically re-introduces its creators in an endless loop (I never know if I’ve used the word semiotic correctly but I figure if I keep using it, I’ll have to be correct eventually), I grow weary of the need for faux-deep wraparound justifications for each recipe, all of which eventually sound the same — you know, here’s the thing: it’s time we talk about tubers; here’s part one in my series called, it just me or is no one celebrating the cephalopod; call me crazy but I’ve had it up to here with [x ingredient that they have previously shared nineteen recipes of] and it’s time to admit that [y ingredient which has one molecule’s difference from x ingredient] is superior. But without wanting to accept self-awareness as a means to an end; I’ve got to hand it to the dull-to-me food creators in this one regard: when I consider this no-bake chocolate ganache tart, I genuinely do feel like saying bland platitudes about how it’s superior to all other chocolate goods, indicating that I’m the first person to ever feel this way. Ever taste a chocolate tart so good it makes you boring?

I’d shudder, if it weren’t so distractingly delicious.

A ganache tart like this is somewhere between buttered toast and a roast chicken on the continuum of recipes that, once you reach a certain level of instinct, you probably don’t need a recipe for; the idea certainly isn’t original and yet I don’t have anyone in particular to attribute it to, nor did I consult any texts; I just made a biscuit base and put some ganache in it. With that in mind, you can consider this a suggestion as much as a recipe to follow word for word. And it is rather customisable — you could go all dark chocolate; use different flavoured or gluten-free biscuits or coconut cream; switch a different booze for the pleasantly elegant cognac or leave it out. But I wouldn’t personally be without the Hobnobs — with only two layers to sink your teeth into, their husky golden oatiness provides both a sturdy base and a warm, treacly flavour profile.

I also maintain that this tastes better in a square tin — not least because it’s less intimidating, psychologically, than a fluted tart tin, and as recipes can smell fear on you like a skittish horse, it’s best to not prod that hornet’s nest, to mix my animal metaphors. The square shape adds to the sturdiness, making the ganache seem even more astonishingly satiny in comparison. And it’s so satiny, the chocolate gently yet stickily solidified, it tastes like you’ve done so much more — tempered egg yolks; erected a double boiler, perhaps — when it’s just some heating and stirring. Somehow, it’s just enough cream to suggest all of that, without the slightest hint of fear that it won’t set. The simplicity of the ingredients really puts the chocolate on a pedestal, so make sure you buy something that you’d happily eat raw, as it doesn’t have much to hide behind.

A fat slab of this chocolate tart with a gleaming, tangy quenelle of creme fraiche would be an ideal dessert, but I’m so rapturous about it that I’ll be considering sticking candles into its ganache-y surface at every birthday for the rest of my life; perhaps it’s time we throw over the mundanity of birthday cake for its cooler out-of-town cousin, the no-bake chocolate ganache tart (I hate myself for talking like this AND for disrespecting birthday cake, a most delicious genre, but this tart is making me giddy and heedless.)

Perhaps also adding to the heedlessness, or the pervasive air of me not making a lick of sense, is that through hot-headed foolhardiness I deleted all the photos you see, and all the photos you’ve ever seen in the last year, off my SD card last night and through Hackers-level magic and hoping for the best, I managed to resurrect them all three hours later; by which point I was too tired to write, so I put it off till this evening when — inexplicably but also like clockwork, if that clock was really stupid — I didn’t start writing this blog post till 11pm and it’s now 1am but I am nothing if not a servant of many sunk-cost fallacies, so on I press. Really, what else do you even need me to say: chocolate is good, ganache is silky, biscuit crumbs bound with butter tastes like a magic trick that you know the sleight-of-hand secret behind; it obviously tastes exceptional, that’s it really!

If you’re in the mood to glorify chocolate further, you might also consider my Chocolate Fudge Ripple Ice Cream; these Chocolate Rosemary Cookies, and Nigella’s Chocolate Pistachio Fudge.

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PS: If you’re after a way to support a local charity trying to get in on the ground and provide aid to people in Palestine, despite nonstop setbacks and ongoing atrocities, ReliefAid’s Gaza Appeal is doing amazing work and I urge you to support them if you can.

No-bake Chocolate Ganache Tart

Easy to make, beyond easy to eat, simple yet showstopping. Hardly original, but a recipe by myself.

• 300g (roughly 1 and a half packages) Hobnob biscuits
• 125g butter
• 250g milk chocolate
• 100g dark chocolate
• 25g butter, extra
• 250ml (1 cup) cream
• 1 tablespoon cognac (option, and see notes)
• sea salt, to taste (optional)

1: Find a 25cm square cake tin and line with a large sheet of baking paper. Break the 300g Hobnobs into a food processor and blend into crumbs. Melt the 125g butter in a saucepan and pour over the crumbs; process again to dampen everything.

2: Tip the crumbs into the paper-lined tin — it might be easier to do this half at a time — and press down with the back of a spoon to firmly pack the crumbs into the base and inner walls of the tin, in an even layer. Once you have a fairly even crumb shell, pop the tin in the refrigerator and move onto the ganache.

3: Roughly chop the 250g milk chocolate and 100g dark chocolate, and place in a heatproof bowl. Cut the 25g butter into small pieces and add to the bowl with the chocolate. Warm the 250ml cream — I used the same pan I melted the butter in, briefly wiped out — until it’s just below bubbling with the surface starting to wobble. Immediately pour the cream into the bowl of chocolate and let it sit, without touching, for five minutes.

4: After five minutes, stir the cream and chocolate together, letting the former melt into the latter, until you have a glossy pool of chocolatey sauce. At this point, add the tablespooon of cognac or similar if you’re using it. You may want to add a pinch of sea salt at this point as well; I didn’t.

5: Remove the tin with the crumb base from the fridge, and gently pour this chocolate ganache into it, tilting the tin left and right for the ganache to evenly coat the base. Return the chocolate-filled tart to the fridge for two hours, or overnight. To serve, gently lift the entire chilled tart out of the tin using the baking paper as handles, and slice into slabs with a sharp knife that you’ve run under hot water then dried.

Makes around 12 slices, give or take.

Notes:

• I only ever use salted butter, because that is what we’re provided in our supermarkets. If yours is unsalted, which is probably the superior choice, you’ll very likely want to add that sea salt.
• If you don’t want to add alcohol, just leave it out. If you want to keep it in but don’t have cognac, you could try bourbon, Cointreau, Disaronno, or coffee liqueur instead; bearing in mind the effect that these will have on the flavour profile. You could also add a splash of vanilla or almond extract instead, or as well.

music lately:

Theresa’s Sound-World by Sonic Youth, it has a languid menace that becomes actual menace as the guitars speed up frenetically before slowing down to a saunter again with that riff coming in like autumn dusk; in its muted snarl there is a kind of joyfulness.

Dues, by Ronee Blakley, from the film Nashville. She wrote all her characters’ songs, as did most of the actors in this film – and look, I know someone’s got to write them but it still floors me that someone could so confidently envelop every angle of the song’s delivery. Anyway, this song always makes me want to cry!

Alone Again Or, by Love. The most evocative tune, the most baldly upfront lyrics: you’ll do just what you choose to do, and I will be alone again tonight my dear; equally haunting from form to function.

Freedom! ’90, by George Michael. Is there a name for that particular piano sound that was pervasive at the time? You know, Primal Scream used it, et cetera…anyway this song is so exhilarating it almost makes me sick, I love it so much.