Sun rays on bare skin. Cloudless cerulean skies. Crickets punctuating the muggy summer air with their unwavering high pitched cries. Afternoons so blindingly bright that everywhere you look is an overexposed picture. Flushed cheeks, floaty cotton dresses, long hair swept up in ponytails. Leaves a verdant green. An occasional breeze whooshes by. Sighs of relief.
A quintessential summer’s day.
On such a quintessential summer’s day I visited a blueberry farm for the very first time. I walked amongst the rows of purpley-blue studded shrubs, pausing here and there to pick out the particularly plump-looking berries. Some made it into the basket to take home and be turned into a dessert, some were too hard to resist a taste at that instant. Nevertheless, I exited the premises with an overflowing boxful of sapphire blues and an incipient aspiration to retire on a berry farm. Almost all of the berries ended up piled up high on these tarts filled with a golden tangy-sweet passionfruit curd, anchored by miniature mountains of whipped sweet cream cheese, and adorned with a gentle dusting of powdered sugar. The tarts taste of summer, sunshine and smiles. They are a story of a perfect August day encapsulated in pastry, now a beautiful memory.
Blueberry Passionfruit Cream Cheese Tartlets
make 6 tartlets
For the tart crust:
204 grams all-purpose flour
60 grams icing sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
128 grams unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 large egg yolk
For the passionfruit curd:
66 grams sugar
1 large egg + 1 large egg yolk
60 ml passionfruit puree
125 grams unsalted butter, cubed and softened at room temperature
For the cream cheese mousse:
110 grams cream cheese
40 grams sugar
60 ml heavy cream
For the decoration:
blueberries
icing sugar
Make the tart crust: Follow instructions in this post. (This tart crust recipe yields more than 6 tartlets, you can refrigerate or freeze the extra and use it for a different occasion.)
Make the passionfruit curd: Follow instructions in this post.
Make the cream cheese mousse: Beat the cream cheese and sugar together until smooth. Whisk the mixture until light and fluffy. In a separate bowl, whip the cream cheese to soft peaks. Fold in the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture in three batches, taking care not to deflate the whipped cream. Transfer mixture into a piping tip fitted with a large round tip.
Assemble the tart: Fill the baked and cooled tart shells until just shy of the brim with the prepared and chilled passionfruit curd. Try not to go overboard (been there, done that, don’t recommend). Arrange a ring of blueberries on the inner circumference of the tart.
Pipe a tall mound of the cream cheese mixture onto the center of the tart. This might disrupt the passionfruit curd and cause it to flow over the brim of the tart, which is why you need to avoid overfilling the tart. Stud blueberries into the cream, starting from the bottom and working your way up. Sift icing sugar over the tops et voilà.
