I Picked Seventeen Berries This Year!!

Fresh Blueberry Tart with the berries from my balcony garden Haha... This was the best I could do with the SEVENTEEN blueberries I picked this summer. (Well, actually, three unripe ones are still left on the bush.) Yes, I baked a 18 cm tart shell (recipe here, but I scaled it down), filled it with custard cream (recipe here, in Japanese), then cut out this tiny piece and put all my blueberries on it. I know. The cream got warmer and softer while I was taking these shots. The berries in this photo look almost ready to make a landslide, don't they? Unfortunately the berries were not as sweet as the ones I picked in previous years. I wonder why... Maybe I should have waited longer? Then I realized that I picked blueberries and used them in August in 2005 and 2006. But this year, everthing was earlier... The bush started blooming earlier, and the berries started ripening earlier. And I waited for at least 2 weeks before I picked them. But still... They probably needed to experience the summer heat to turn sweet? But these were good, fresh berries and the tart was not bad, after all. One good thing is that I still have the rest of the cream-filled tart shell in the fridge, so I can make a different kind of fruit tart with it. Two different fruit tarts from one tart shell. Sort of like killing two birds with one stone? (←No.) :P BTW, this was my first time using microwave for making custard cream, but I didn't like it very much. I prefer a saucepan. Categories: Sweets