Not in order of how I made them that weekend, because there was no really order of how I made things, let's start off with my Blueberry Track Tarts.
All this pie making has got me eager to get pie/tart crusts perfect! This is also in my support of pie domination. I should really call these cup pies or cuppies or maybe not really since they are indeed tarts. Cuptarts?
I already had one success and one failure for pie crusts, so I thought I'd give tart crusts a try as I had found a nice recipe for blueberry tarts and I had lovely blueberries from St. Lawrence Market. Now is the beginning of the blueberry season by the way. That means they are the sweetest and cheapest! So pick some up to snack on or cook with. Nerdism: Blueberries are also great for their anti-oxidant properties. That means they fight against cancer and aging. They're one of those super foods that taste delicious, not like.... erm... Milk Thistle. (I dunno I had to Google superfoods to find a weird one.)
I brought them to the second event of the SRTA Sigma Time Attack season in support of B. I thought it would be a nice cool treat that would be easy to snack on. B set a personal best record time of 1:09.85! Congrats!
Back to the tarts though. So here goes:
First step was tart crust. Now tart crusts are different from pie crusts in that they are more sturdy and brittle as opposed to flakey and buttery.
1. I whipped the butter a little bit, to warm it up so that it would mix with the other ingredients better and break it up so that there was more surface area to bind with the sugar. I then added the powdered sugar, It looks like it'll be really dry to start off but ass you mix, the sugars will dissolve and you get a paste.
2. The eggs were added one by one and the flour was mixed in:
The dough still looked dry at this point but adding some cream gave it the perfect consistency. Pie/tart doughs can be tricky in that, depending on the humidity, the same recipe may not turn out all the time. It's important to add a little liquid at a time till you get what you want. Some times that means using a little more or less of the liquid that's call for in the recipe.
3. After chilling, I rolled the dough out and cut out rounds to fit in my tart shells. As I didn't have a cutter that was big enough. I simply rolled the dough a little thicker, cut the circles and then used a rolling pin to make the circles larger. Try to cut the dough with the circles close together so you can avoid so much scrap. The scrap can be folded and rolled out again though.
4. Roll out the dough into the tart dishes. This step can be a little tricky, especially with bigger pies or tarts. Since these are small it made it a bit easier. When putting the dough into the dish, you want to make sure that you don't stretch the dough as you press it into the dish, this means later on as it bakes, it'll shrink in that area, giving you a deformed crust. There are a few ways you can avoid this, you can chill them in the fridge for a bit before baking or bake them upside down so the dough stretches downward instead of inward.Baking them with baking beans may also help the crust from slouching down. I chose to chill them before baking which worked wonderfully.
5. Bake the tart shells, in the chaos of my epic baking, I forgot to take pictures of the baked shells, forgive me. These crusts don't brown very much so bake them until they have just a little bit of colour on them or you may burn them.
Custard
I was really excited to make this. I love custard. It's satiny smooth, rich flavour. Yum! Custards can be challenging to make because you are adding eggs to heat. Usually when you cook eggs, the proteins coagulate, if this happens in a custard that means lumpy and a lumpy custard is not a happy custard. (haha)
Anyway Step 1: Heat the milk, sugar, vanilla bean seeds and pod and salt in a small pot until you get a nice simmer.
2. Separate egg yolks from the whites and whip the egg yolks with starch and sugar.
Isn't this the cutest egg whisk you've ever seen? I get why he's sad but he did a good job =)
3. The next part is the tricky part, while whisking continuously, slowing add the milk mixture into the egg yolks. Then transfer everything back into the pot and whisk and heat until it thickens and reaches 160F. Now I didn't have a thermometer so I just thought I'll just heat it until it thickens but I didn't really know what they meant by thicken.
So there I was for maybe 5- 10 minutes, whisking away wondering to myself, is this thickened enough? Trust me you'll know, it happens like magic, at first I thought I was screwed cause it started to get lumpy and I removed it from the heat right away but kept whisking, then I turned on the cold water and tried to run it over the bottom of the pot, not easy.
Finally the whole thing got to the same consistency and I realized OH, this is thickened. There's no mistaking it, it has a classic custard consistency. So if you don't have a thermometer, just heat it gently, whisk like crazy and remove it from the heat immediately after you think you're screwed. Amidst the chaos, I again forgot the take a picture. Sorry!
I strained the custard though a sieve and cooled everything in the fridge, be sure to touch your plastic wrap to the surface of your custard so you don't get a skin on top.
Assembly was easy, spoon some custard into the shell and top with blueberries. Yum yum, they turned out lovely, the custard was perfect, the tart was sturdy, the blueberries fresh and the whole thing, not too sweet. I'll definitely be making this again and I'll fill in the missing pictures as I go.
I know, too much text, not enough pictures. I'll fix that the next time I make these, promise!
Oh yea here's what I got for Googling Blueberry Track Tarts. Hah! Always so amusing.
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