A birthday torte

It was David's birthday yesterday. Tonight is his birthday celebration meal thing and, as I have started doing of late, I thought I'd bake him something in lieu of a present. This is particularly good for Dave, as we have a long-standing agreement that for each birthday, we would look for a present for the other, but not buy anything if we couldn't find something suitable. But I think a baked dessert will fit the bill nicely!

I also found myself in Sainsbury's last night, where I found a nice, cheap, loose-bottomed flan ring - something that I've been after for some time now (I also found a sifting thing (not a sieve, but similar) for 15p, which I thought was worth a punt!), so I thought this would be a good opportunity to christen it. So, for this birthday, Dave is getting a birthday chocolate torte.

Birthday Chocolate Torte
Ingredients
For the shortcrust pastry:

• 170g plain flour
• 85g butter
• Very cold water

For the filling:

• 140g Plain chocolate
• 170g Butter
• 340g Caster sugar
• 95g Plain flour
• 6 Eggs

For the topping:

• 80g Plain chocolate (I would have made more topping, but I ran out of chocolate!)
• 10g Butter
• 1 1/2 tbsp Water

Method

1. Sift the flour for the pastry into a large bowl
2. Rub in the butter for the pastry to coarse breadcrumb-like texture
3. Add 2 tablespoons of very cold water. Mix to a firm dough, adding more water if necessary, but it should not be too damp
4. Wrap and chill in the fridge for 30 mins
5. Roll out and line a flan case. Trim off excess, and prick the base all over with a fork. Line the base with baking parchment and weigh down with baking beans and bake at 200C/Gas Mark 6 for 20 minutes. Remove the baking beans and parchment then bake for another 10 minutes until lightly golden
6. Allow to cool in the tin
7. Whisk the flour for the filling, sugar and eggs together in a large bowl
   
8. Melt the chocolate and butter for the filling and stir in
9. Bake at 180C/Gas Mark 4 for 30-40 minutes until the filling is just set
10. Allow to cool on a wire rack
11. Melt the chocolate, butter and water for the topping together in a bowl and mix well
12. Spread over the cooled torte
13. Refrigerate to set
    

Ready to roll (end of step 4)!The finished case ready for the oven (midway through step 5).The flan case fresh from the oven (end of step 5). Oops, I forgot that the pastry shrinks on baking - you're supposed to leave a little edge around the top of the flan ring when trimming. Oh well. I also think I was a little overly ambitious with how dry my pastry was, which is probably why I ended up with cracks in the sides. I'm going to line them (on the outside) with baking parchment and hope for the best...
Ready to go into the oven. I think it looks pretty darned good!
Quite a lot of leftover filling though. I could have halved the quantities and it would have been sufficient.
So I tipped a bit into a bowl and microwaved it for 2 minutes. Not really very appetising, I must say.It looks a bit better when spooned out though. I think the filling isn't quite right personally - based on this, I think not enough chocolate, too much sugar and definitely too much egg. But reasonable at least.The remainder of the filling got tipped into a sandwich tin and stuck at the bottom of the oven with the main torte.Here's the torte fresh from the oven (end of step 9).And here is the (almost) finished torte about to go into the fridge (end of step 12).