Sunday 2 September 2012

CLINGING DESPERATELY TO THE LAST REMNANTS OF SUMMER

Local Blueberry Tarts with Coconut-Vanilla Bean Pastry Cream
Local Blueberries fully ripe and ready for picking!
The buckets they provide hold about 5 lbs of berries.  They provide buckets for picking, but you should bring your own shallow containers for bringing the berries home.  Transfer the berries from their buckets after weighing and paying.  Minimum was 5 lbs per person (i.e one bucket per adult).  We picked 2 buckets and paid $1.75/lb.  It took us a leisurely 1 hour to pick two buckets full.  

U-Pick Blueberry Field @ GS Farms, Richmond.  Check out this link for other local UPick farms
Some of the bushes were so full of berries, they sagged from the weight of the berries

Coconut milk pastry cream...a good thing
For the Coconut Vanilla Bean Pastry Cream, I used my ol' trusty recipe from a previous post.   The toughest part...waiting for the pastry cream to cool before eating!  
No need to make tart pastry from scratch...though I know you can do it...the time is ripe to eat these blueberries now!  There's 10 lbs of these blueberries! Life's too short!  No time to lose!   Buy frozen tart shells from the grocery store and bake per instructions before filling with pastry cream and berries.
Press the cooked pastry cream through a sieve to ensure smoothness.
Refrigerate the pastry cream until cold.  To prevent a skin from forming, you should press plastic wrap on the surface.

FYI:  That's not dirt in my pastry cream.  Those are quality Tahitian Vanilla Bean seeds freshly scraped from the juicy pods.
Top the fresh berries on the pastry cream.  No need to glaze.  Savour the last remnants of summer.
Wishing all my readers a relaxing Labour Day weekend and a fantastic start to the new school year! 
;* cb 

17 comments:

Char said...

That looks divine. I've been to a 'pick your own' farm once when I was away on holidays and I sweat the fruit tasted better than anything I'd tasted before. I think it was because it was just so fresh.

Cakebrain said...

@Char, thanks! they did taste delicious! I know...fresh picked is so much better than store-bought. The berries would never have made it to market without being squished. They were so ripe and sweet. And picking your own is so much fun!

cocoa and coconut said...

I love that you had fresh blueberries to pick for yourself. It would have made this tart an even bigger pleasure to make..and eat!

thelittleloaf said...

I adore blueberries and always have a supply in the freezer. But am hugely jealous of you picking your own!

Cakebrain said...

@thelittleloaf, yah, I love being able to pick our own fruit! it's so fun and the berries are way more sweet!

Cakebrain said...

@Brittany, yes, the tart was deliciously sweet...never had such great berries!

amlamonte said...

oh my goodness these are lovely! i am especially impressed by your use of real vanilla beans. those are still a big treat for me, but they make such a difference!

Cakebrain said...

@a.maren,
Oh yah...I still have 2 big packages of cryovac wrapped Tahitian vanilla beans...moist and supple from a massive purchase a while ago online. I use every last bit of the bean. Pods in vodka for extract making, or in sugar for vanilla sugar. Scraped seeds for baking or custards. It's quite economical if you go bulk. I never buy individual pods.

chinese food brisbane said...

Very nice explained! Well done!

Francesca Parise- In my sweet kitchen said...

Hello my name Francesca and I'm Italian. I like your blog. if you want to also visit my page. Thank you. Francesca.

Marjan said...

What a great idea!!! Will try this soon.

Unknown said...

Wow, I can't help drooling. I just love the Clinging Desperately to the Last Remnants of Summer well done!
If you submitted your CLINGING DESPERATELY TO THE LAST REMNANTS OF SUMMER photos to http://www.foodporn.net , I'll bet they will make you on the home page.
Gosh, you have made me sooo hungry !

Connie the Cookie Monster said...

omg fruit tarts!!! coconut milk and vanilla bean sounds like a divine combo

tom@morethanpepper said...

love the title and the pics

Anonymous said...

My spouse and I stumbled over here by a different web page and thought I might as well check things out.
I like what I see so i am just following you. Look forward to looking over
your web page yet again.
Feel free to surf my blog post : christmas recipes

Connie the Cookie Monster said...

oh and yay for eating local! im in lfs at ubc so im all for supporting our local farmers :)

Bea said...

WOW! What I'd give to be able to pick my own blueberries! I'm slightly addicted to them at the moment, with a banana on top of my cereal! Lovely blog.

LinkWithin

Related Posts Widget for Blogs by LinkWithin