A Little French Celebration

I'm giddy with excitement! In the last post I told you about our upcoming trip to the land of good food and wine. To celebrate, I decided to bake a tarte aux myrtilles today. The tart brings back a lot of fond memories of our last vacation in France. While we were eating it, I asked Hans if it was anything like he remembered and his reply was "no...this one's MUCH better". That was a huge compliment, but I can't take all the credit. This is a recipe from the fabulous blog Chocolate and Zucchini. If you're into good food and great ingredients you'll love this blog. Not to mention how inspirational its writer is!


Here's the recipe:

Tarte aux Myrtilles

Pie dough :
- 170 g flour
- 85 g sugar
- 85 g butter
- a dash of milk

Filling :
- 300 g blueberries
- 1 Tbsp crème fraîche
- 1 Tbsp sugar
- 1 egg

Finishing touch :
- 1 Tbsp sugar

Preheat the oven to 230°C (440°F), and grease a shallow tart pan or line it with parchment paper.

Make the dough : in a food processor, mix the sugar and butter until fluffy. Add in the flour until the dough forms coarse crumbs. Add in a dash of milk, and mix again. Pour this mixture evenly into your tart pan, and press the dough down to pack it and cover the surface the pan, forming a little rim all around. Put in the oven to bake for 20 minutes.

Take the pie crust out and lower the temperature to 180°C (360°F). Pour in the blueberries, and return into the oven for 15 minutes.

In the meantime, beat together in a small bowl the crème fraîche, 1 Tbsp of sugar and the egg. Take the tart out of the oven, pour the mixture evenly over the blueberries and return into the oven for another 15 minutes, or until set. Leave in the turned off oven for another 15 minutes.

Let cool completely, and sprinkle with a tablespoon of sugar just before serving.

NOTE: Keep an eye on the pie crust! Twenty minutes was waaay too long and I ended up burning my first one! Mine took more like ten minutes. I also used powdered sugar as a finishing touch.