Mum's Blueberry Cheese Tarts

Originally adapted this recipe from a photocopied newspaper cutting, written by Margaret Cheng and Mary Chen. But since my mum taught me this, supervised me strictly *tension*, I credit this recipe to her la! People praised it so much lor, can sell, the tart base is good, nice presentation, etc. Nyahaha, thanks for the support guys! The recipe here.

Materials and Relevant Equipment

• Tart mould (medium size) (this recipe makes 40-44 medium sized tarts, 90 small sized tarts).
• Paper base
• Oven
• Mixer

Ingredients
Pastry

• Flour (300 g)
• Icing sugar (75 g)
• Butter, unsalted (180 g)
• Egg (1/2 if the egg is big)

Filling

• Blueberry filling (not jam!) (250 g)
• Philadelphia cream cheese (250 g)
• Icing sugar (50 g)
• Butter, unsalted (20 g)
• Egg (1/2 if the egg is big)
• Milk (1/2 tbs)

Cube the butter so that it melts faster (mum's tip). While waiting for butter to be slightly melt, sieve flour and icing sugar into mixing bowl. Rub the butter cubes into the mixture.

The mixture should now resemble bread crumbs. Add the egg, and start rubbing them together to form a dough. So magical, this part!! So little egg also able to hold the crumbly bits together, hebatness. Leave the dough in the refrigerator to make it slightly harder.

The dough. Got blue tinge in my refrigerator because this fridge claims to have anti-bacterial light (yeah right!!!).

While waiting for dough to harden, prepare the cheese filling because it takes a long while to raise frothily. Place the cream cheese, icing sugar and butter in mixer and run the beater gradually from low to high power.

At the same time also prepare your mould, blueberry filling and the paper base. Preheat the oven at 180 deg C. Roll dough into the size of...fish bait floats (?) and press it, subsequently press it concaved with your finger. Place the flat dough into the mould. Pull the dough from the bottom upwards toward the mould wall. Take off any excess dough, as long as the dough touches the edges of the mould, it'll be enough.

Pay attention to your cheese filling, change beater speed if needed. When all moulds are filled, or if one tray filled, then bake the base at 180 deg C for 20 minutes or until golden brown, whichever occurs first.

Fill the baked tarts' base with blueberry filling. Time to take care of the cream filling, when it becomes frothy, stop the mixer and add some milk (1 tbs) and stir with a spoon. Fill the tarts with cheese filling.

Cheese filled-tarts.

Pattern making! Optional of course, but this will make your tarts look prettier. Told you this was a girly topic. Anyway, use a toothpick and dip the stick into blueberry filling. Draw a pattern using the stick as you wish (depending on your creativity, there's no specific way to draw them).

Pattern-drawn tarts.

If you haven't drawn patterns, you could straight away bake the tarts after you've filled the cheese filling at 180 deg C for 8 minutes. If you have, then bake them after you've done the patterns. Tarts are now ready to be served!

Appetising hor?