Life really isn’t anything much without a whole lot of baking that includes blueberries. They are in my top five favourite fruits.
I’ve been working a lot with pastry, and I have to say that one of the best sweet short pastry recipes I have ever made comes from Little & Friday in Auckland, NZ. They make all sorts of amazing tarts with it, and an especially nice version they do in winter is an apple and custard mixture coated with a crumble topping.
This recipe isn’t a crumble, but its definitely inspired by the idea of fruit baked with creme patissiere.
It’s mostly blueberries, with a few apple pieces thrown in for good measure. Other berries would work too. More blueberries get baked on top, to make a beautiful jammy patina on top.
And you can top the tarts it with silky meringue if you want something really soft and wonderful.
Blueberry Custard Tarts
makes 12 – I like to use individual brioche tins as moulds
sweet shortcrust pastry
ingredients
2 3/4 cups flour
1 cup icing sugar
250 g unsalted butter, cold, cubed
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg
1 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp lemon zest
1/4 tsp vanilla powder
mixing
Combine the flour and icing sugar in a food processor. Add the butter and salt, and pulse until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the remaining ingredients and pulse until the mixture starts to come together, forming rags and crumbs. Gather the mixture together, press into a slab and wrap in cling wrap. Chill for at least 30 minutes.
creme patissiere
ingredients
320mL milk
1/4 cup caster sugar
pinch vanilla powder
2 tbsp plus 2 tsp cornflour
2 egg yolks (reserve the whites for meringue, or freeze the other for another use)
250g fresh blueberries
1 apple, cut into small cubes
mixing
Heat the milk, half the sugar and the vanilla powder in a saucepan over medium heat until the milk is nearly boiling. Meanwhile combine the remaining sugar and cornflour in a small bowl, add egg yolks and whisk until a smooth paste forms.
Whisking all the time, add the hot milk to the yolk mixture in a very thin stream until the milk is all added. Transfer the mixture to the saucepan, heat over a medium heat, whisking all the time until the mixture starts to boil and has thickened. Remove from the heat, let cool a little, then stir in 125g of the blueberries and the apple. Cover with cling wrap and cool until the pastry is ready.
Roll out the pastry to approximately 2-3mm thick. Cut 12 15cm rounds. Gently press the pastry rounds into the brioche tins. Add about 1/4 cup custard mixture to each tart case. Sprinkle with remaining blueberries.
Bake at 170 degrees Celsius for 25-30 minutes until the blueberries on top have burst and become jammy. The custard should be browned in places. Remove from the oven and cool.
If topping with meringue, make a double Swiss meringue mixture from this recipe, pipe liberally over the cool tarts and blowtorch the meringue as described in the linked recipe.
Enjoy!xxx
