Okay. Maybe I went just a little overboard with this one. But I had to practice my lemon meringue tarts and as long as I was doing one little pie I might as well do two and just add cocoa to half the dough. And the ice cream was made ahead of time, then I just had to try out my new digital thermometer for tempering the chocolate. And don’t they all look so cute on the plate?

I made a little lemon meringue pie. I used my favorite pie crust recipe and replaced some flour with almond meal and ground pecans. I rolled out the crust, cut 3 inch circles, and bakes them in a mini cupcake pan. They were the perfect size.

I made the other little tart using the same pie crust recipe, but this time I replaced some flour with cocoa powder. The filling was a sweet pastry cream with melted chocolate. I covered the filling with a layer of chocolate ganache, then topped the whole thing with some intensely raspberry whipped cream.

One teensy problem: I took these pictures during the afternoon right before the guests arrived and I thought the plate looked quite nice. When it came time to prepare each plate after dinner, however, I had a plating epiphany and started squirting chocolate all over the plate and marbling it fancily. Ergo, these pictures were taken indoors as I was rushing to prevent the ice cream from melting. Although I edited the pictures later to try to adjust the colors, I hope you’ll excuse the photos and enjoy the technique.

And no, I’m not ashamed to say despite a day of sampling in the kitchen, my dessert plate was also completely clean.