Saturday, July 10, 2010

Blueberry Cobbler Tarts

Well, my CSA shares with Wayward Seed Farm are coming in, and I've been shackled with the obligation to 1) figure out what the heck they gave me, and 2) figure out what to make with what they gave me.

With strawberry fruit shares, it's pretty easy for me to figure out what to do: eat them, raw, before, during and after all meals. Easy-peasy.

For my most recent CSA fruit share, I received a portion of blueberries. I'm not the biggest fan of blueberries—and I've never really enjoyed eating them raw—so I knew I had to enlist the help of the Internet to solve the problem of what to do with roughly two cups of fresh Ohio blueberries.

Happily, I stumbled upon this recipe for exactly two cups of blueberries on recipezaar, entitled "Individual Blueberry Cobblers," by Julie B's Hive. It was a Very Easy recipe, and I noted that I had most of the ingredients already in my cupboard. Score!

I slightly modified this recipe to the following, and hence it has been renamed:

Blueberry Cobbler Tarts
2 cups fresh Ohio blueberries
sugar (a bit over half a cup, in all)
1/4 cup lemon juice
3/4 cup water
3 tablespoons butter
1 egg
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/3 cup 1% milk

First, preheat the oven to 375°F.

Next, combine the blueberries, 1/4 cup of sugar, lemon juice and water in a saucepan.

Brink the mixture to a boil, then lower the temperature and let simmer for five minutes.

While the blueberries are simmering, lightly oil four "tart pans." Since this recipe holds quite a bit, I've actually used 10 oz. soufflĂ© dish/ramekins that I purchased from Crate and Barrel. (Love that place!) 

After the blueberry mixture (Shall we now call it a compote?) has simmered for five minutes, pour equal amounts into the four greased mini baking dishes. All attempts to avoid drooling into the tart pans is encouraged at this point.

Now it's time to make the delicious (!) cobbler batter. First cream the butter, 1/3 cup sugar, egg, vanilla extract and almond extract until well blended. Next, mix the flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg in a separate bowl. Add the flour mixture into the butter mixture, along with the milk. Mix until well blended, but don't over-mix it. (I've found over-mixing to be a general no-no when dealing with anything remotely pastry-like.)

Once mixed, spoon the cobbler batter over the hot blueberries in their mini baking dishes.

Licking the batter remnants off the spoon is pretty much mandatory at this point. It is goo-oo-ood. 

Bake the tarts at 375°F for about 30 minutes, or until browned. Don't overcook, as the cake part of the cobbler can get quite dry. While cooking, commence cleaning the batter bowl with your tongue.

When the tarts are browned, serve them warm, plain, or with a bit of ice cream or whipped cream. The blueberry cobbler tarts can be quite rich, so some creamy vanilla ice cream can go a long way to cut the sweet of the blueberries.

Enjoy!


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As my Blueberry Cobbler Tarts were cooking, I began to wonder about the difference between cobblers and tarts and crisps and whatnot. Some interesting reading on the subject can be found here.

4 comments:

  1. great post! I HEART blueberries and happen to have all of this on hand as well.

    Sunday desert! YUM.

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  2. Your blueberry tarts look very good, and what a perfect time of year with blueberries in season, I have tons of the little beauties to bake with. Look forward to making your tarts, will let you know the results.

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  3. What a great use of some blueberries, these look so good. Blueberries aren't in season currently here, we are still under a lot of snow. Do you think if I thawed some frozen blueberries these would still turn out?

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  4. This recipe looks delicious. Do you know the nutritional values? If you post it on www.myrecipemagic.com they will calculate it for you and you can get paid for posting recipes.

    ReplyDelete