Tags
baking, blackberries, fresh fruit, glaze, postaday2012, tarts
This morning I did weight class, cold sore and all, it did me good to listen to the ladies talk about a whole bunch of things such as; Ken Burns documentary on the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s, it’s a must see and they talked about homeopathic remedies for poison ivy, chest colds and cold sores, Hillary Clinton came up in the conversation as well especially if she is going to run for the presidency in 2016. You would think that we had enough of politics after this past election but Hillary is special, the ladies really admire her.
I had car trouble so my co-leader Sybil, was sweet enough to come to Blandford to pick me up and on the way back from weight class, Sybil stopped at her friend’s house to pick up a bag of parsnips from her garden. When Sybil dropped me off, she told me to get a bag and the dear sweet woman gave me a nice bunch, of fresh from the garden, parsnips. Tomorrow I’ll figure out what to do with them, something fun and different I hope.
This afternoon I made a fresh blackberry and blueberry tarte. My hubby had purchased 3 containers of blackberries and a container of blueberries; I was going to put them in a ziplock bag and put them into the freezer. I was all set to do that yesterday, when the baby boy came over for food and asked me what I was doing with the berries. I told him that they were going in the freezer and the baby boy asked me why I wasn’t making a pie. I told him because no one was going to eat it. The baby boy said that he would eat it, and I replied oh really, you often say no the offers of sweet things. The baby boy said that a fresh blackberry pie would be something that he would say yes to, so it was decided, Friday after weight class, Maman was going to be making a fresh pie.
I had extra homemade pastry crust dough in the refrigerator that I rolled out into the fluted pie tin, I pricked the dough with a fork, lined the dough with aluminum that I filled with rice and put it into 375 degree oven to bake the pie shell completely, it took about 10 minutes and then I took out the aluminum foil and the rice and put the pie crust back in the oven for almost 15 minutes more and it was a golden brown baked pie shell.
I made a vanilla pastry cream to fill the pie shell with; so I took 1 1/3 cups of whole milk and put it to simmer on the stove while I mixed at high speed 4 egg yolks, 1/3 cup of sugar, 2 tablespoons of flour and 2 tablespoons of cornstarch for two minutes, this made for a real thick mixture. Carefully, a little bit at a time I whisked in the scalded milk, very important to go little by little so you don’t scramble the eggs. Once it is all whisked together, you put it back into the pot and whisk it for quite a few minutes until it gets real thick like a custard, I put the cream into a bowl, let it cool with a piece of parchment paper right on top so that the pastry cream doesn’t get a skin. Once it was cool enough, I put it into the refrigerator.
At about 5 o’clock, I took out the pastry cream and spread it in the pie shell and arranged the blackberries and blueberries over the pastry cream and to add the final touch, I added water to apricot preserves in a small pot over medium heat until it got syrupy and I brushed the diluted apricot preserves on the berries to make them shiny.
When the baby boy came over this evening, I told him that the tarte was in the refrigerator, a smile appeared on his face and he made a beeline towards the kitchen. He was a happy baby boy after a nice helping of the tarte.
laurieanichols 