Blueberry Tart

Summer is here, but the only way I notice it is from the appearance of "classic" summer fruits in the markets. Not to get too down about the weather here, but SF is not known for its warm, languid summers. Instead, we get wind, fog, mist (imagine the combination of all three at once), and occasionally a sunny day. (Today happens to be one of those, hooray!)

It's a good thing that the farmers in the North Bay area and Central California get lots of summer sun, providing juicy and ripe fruit to this windy city. Nectarines, peaches, apricots, plums, cherries, blueberries--I like just knowing that they're readily available for purchase.

I love blueberries the most, especially when ripe, plump, and sweet. For what I imagine will be a limited time only, the big chain groceries seem to have an abundance of the bluebs. 22 ounces on sale for $4! That's an amazing deal, considering that throughout the year imported berries cost about $4-5 per half pint. I can eat through that in one day.

But with my surplus of cheap berries, I actually have a hard time eating all of them in a week. This, in spite of my throwing about 1 cup and a half of berries into my cereal each morning. And I have been buying more berries before running out of the old batch, for fear that the following week's shipment won't be on sale. (And I'm not going to buy the same clamshell I'm currently getting at $4, for $8, when the price goes back up.) As a result, I'm always thinking about what I can bake with the excess blueberries. A week or so ago I made a delicious lemon blueberry coffeecake with pecan crumble topping (thanks to Cooks Illustrated), and the blueberry tart shown above. I cobbled the tart together from several recipes, baking the crust from the tarta de naranjas recipe that I made back in February, and topping it with cooked vanilla pastry cream and fresh blueberries. The three layers come together nicely in spite of their differences: buttery pastry crust with creamy topping and crunchy berries whose juice is released in the mouth. I can assure you, the combination is quite good.

Blueberry Tart

1 prebaked tart pastry (adapted from The New Spanish Table)

1 pastry cream recipe

1-2 cups fresh blueberries (washed & dried)

prebaked tart pastry shell:

1 1/2 c all purpose flour

2/3 c confectioner's sugar

1 pinch salt

10 tbsp unsalted butter, chilled and cut into cubes

1 large egg yolk beaten with 2 tbsp chilled heavy whipping cream

1 tbsp ice water, if needed

Place flour, sugar, and salt in food processor and pulse 5 or 6 times til mixture is combined. Add the butter and pulse until mixture looks like coarse crumbs. Remove mixture to a bowl and stir in the egg yolk mixture with a fork until evenly distributed. If the dough has started to stick together, shape it into a ball and flatten slightly. Cover tightly in plastic and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or up to 1 day. When ready to use dough, remove and let sit out on the counter for about 10 minutes. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough into an 11 inch circle. Transfer the dough to a 9 inch tart pan with a removable bottom, pressing it into the sides of pan. Trim any excess dough that hangs over. Prick bottom of dough all over with a fork. Freeze dough for about 20 minutes, and meanwhile preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Remove from freezer and cover tart shell with aluminum foil, then add pie weights (or something heavy to keep dough from puffing up while baking) and and bake crust for 25 minutes. Remove pie weights and foil and keep baking for another 8-10 minutes. Cool tart shell in pan on a baking rack completely before filling.

While tart shell is in the oven, prepare pastry cream:

1 c milk

3 egg yolks

1/4 c sugar

1 1/2-2 tbsp cornstarch

1 tsp vanilla extract

Whisk 1/4 cup cold milk, egg yolks, sugar, and flour together. Gradually add remaining milk (warmed, then mixed with cornstarch) and stir until smooth. Heat in double boiler, beating until cream becomes thick, stirring constantly to prevent burning. When thickened, remove from stove and transfer cream to a bowl to let cool. Stir in vanilla extract. Place bowl in a shallow pan of cold water to help cool, and stir cream mixture from time to time to prevent skin forming on top of cream. When mixture is room temperature, use it to fill tart shell. Or, cover with plastic wrap and place in refrigerator for up to 8 hours.

Once tart shell has been filled with pastry cream, smooth it out with a spoon or spatula. Then add blueberries, and voila, the tart is ready to eat.