Chocolate Goat Cheese Cherry Galette

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder and sugar until it is uniform in color. Add the cubes of butter to the bowl and use a pastry cutter or two knives to cut the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles coarse crumbs. There should be visible small lumps of butter.

Add the listed amount of ice water (or coffee) into the bowl and use your hands to gently work the liquid into the dough. You may need to add an additional 1-2 tablespoons of ice water if the dough is too dry, but be careful not to over mix or add too much liquid.

Form the dough into a round disk, wrap with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 425 F.

Divide the dough into 4 – 6 equal portions, depending on the size of dessert that you want to make. Roll each portion of dough into a circle until it is about 1/8″ thick. The dough does not need to be perfect and I think imperfect edges add a rustic appeal.

Place the circles of dough onto parchment lined baking sheets. Use an offset spatula to spread 2 – 3 tablespoons of spreadable chocolate goat cheese like Coco Loco in the center of each dough circle, but make sure you leave at least 1″ around the edge of the pastry for folding.

Mix the cherry filling by adding the cherries, sugar, almond extract, cornstarch, and almonds into a large bowl and mix well. Mound a generous amount of cherry filling into the center of each dough circle on top of the chocolate goat cheese. Be careful to avoid the 1″ clearance around the edge. Dot each mound with a couple of tiny cubes of butter.

To fold the galette, fold the edge nearest to you toward the center. Rotate the galette and fold a portion of the dough right next to your initial fold, and fold that towards the center. Continue making your way around the circle until it is complete. You can lightly pinch the seams with your fingers as it is important that there are no cracks where the juices will leak out during baking, If you have a visible crack, simply patch the area with a small amount of additional dough.

Use a pastry brush to gently brush each pastry crust with melted butter. Reserve any melted butter that is not used for brushing on the pastry once it is baked.

Bake for 30 – 40 minutes. It will be a little more difficult to tell when the chocolate pastry is fully cooked as you will not be able to see any “browning”, but 40 minutes for larger or thicker galettes and 30 – 35 minutes for smaller is a good target. When done, remove the pan from the oven..

Once the galettes are removed from the oven, brush the pastry with any remaining melted butter. Let them cool slightly and serve warm with chocolate ice cream, or at room temperature.

Chocolate pastry dough adapted from Martha Stewart.