Blueberry Cornmeal Tart, Sweet Enough
Yikes! Before blueberry season ends, make this Blueberry Cornmeal Tart. From Alison Roman’s Sweet Enough, an easy, absolutely delicious way to take advantage of fresh blueberries. But before we get into the recipe and my notes…I need to address the elephant in the room. Yes at one time I was ready to burn my Alison Roman cookbooks. In an interview, she decided to DIS Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo as “sell-outs” for hawking products, while encouraging folks to buy her stuff. LOL Interestingly enough she called out two POC women. Backlash ensued, she lost her column in the New York Times, had a Twitter squirmish with Chrissy, which she lost, and felt the ire of many POC foodies. She laid low for a while, started back, and is now back in the good graces of most.
She recovered, but will probably always be under the microscope. Occasionally, controversy rears its head in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t way. She made a dish, called it Gentle Lentils (LOL), and got called out for Appropriating Daal, an Indian staple. What are you going to do? 🤷🏻♀️. Her personality is up my alley, a bit tongue-in-cheek, snarky, funny AND she is fond of expletives, just like me.
Yes, Another Cookbook
She came out with a dessert book and I caved. I have made her dessert recipes and they are pretty darn good. I believe she originally worked in pastry. Her Salted Butter and Chocolate Chunk Cookies went viral one year (pre-fallout) and are really good. They’re buttery, sandy, chocolatey, and sweet with a surprise pop of salt. It hits every taste bud, and has a crispy edge from the demerara sugar finish.
This Blueberry Cornmeal Tart couldn’t be easier. The crust and crumble topping are made from the same dough. Butter, flour, and powdered sugar go into the dough. The powdered sugar lowers the flour’s protein content to help with tenderness. Cornmeal adds that characteristic cornmeal crunch to the crust and crumble. I am not a fan of the grittiness of stone-ground cornmeal. Luckily, cornmeal comes in a wide range of textures and grinds. I love the cornmeal from a local family farm in the Bay Area, Tierra Vegetables. They have an array of heirloom cornmeals that are amazing. My favorite is the Hopi Pink Cornmeal which is finely textured and adds just a tiny bit of crunch. It’s perfect in Christina Tosi’s Corn Cookies where you can see the reddish pink flecks in the cookies, so cool. Use the cornmeal you like.
The Steps
Betcha think the next instruction is to roll the dough out. Nope, there is no rolling involved in the making of this tart. Yay. Reserve a quarter of the dough for the crumble and put it in the fridge to chill. Press the remaining dough into a 9-inch tart pan. How easy is that?
The blueberries are mixed with a bit of sugar and either vinegar or lemon juice, I prefer lemon juice, I am a citrus kinda gal. Flour rounds out the filling to act as a thickener and that’s it.
Pour your blueberry mixture into the tart pan and spread evenly over crust. Press little bits of the dough to form little clumps and sprinkle these over the blueberries. Bake on a sheet to save yourself from oven cleaning.
Bake until the crumble and crust are a nice golden brown and the blueberries bubbling. Remove to a rack and let it cool completely before removing. Serve with a generous scoop of vanilla…cause that’s how we roll! Enjoy!
Blueberry Cornmeal TartI
Ingredients
For the Crust & Topping
- 1 ½ cups /225g all-purpose flour
- ⅓ cup /55 grams cornmeal
- ⅓ cup /50 grams confectioners’ sugar
- ¼ cup /55 grams light brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon / 4 grams baking powder
- 1 teaspoon / 3 grams kosher salt
- ¾ cup /170 grams unsalted butter 1 1/2 sticks, melted and cooled slightly
For the Filling
- 1 pound /455 grams blueberries or combination of blueberries, blackberries and raspberries
- ½ cup /110 grams light brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons / 28 grams apple cider vinegar or fresh lemon or lime juice I prefer lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons / 18 grams all-purpose flour
- Pinch of kosher salt
Instructions
Make the crust and topping: Preheat oven to 350°.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cornmeal, confectioners’ sugar, brown sugar, baking powder and salt. Add melted butter, then use your hands or a wooden spoon to combine ingredients until a coarse dough comes together, with a few dry spots.
- Press 3/4 of the cornmeal mixture into a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom making sure the mixture is evenly pressed on the bottom and about 1/2 inch up the sides. (Using something large and flat, like the bottom of a measuring cup, will be helpful.) Place the shell on a rimmed baking sheet; pop the tart shell and remaining mixture into the fridge while you prepare the filling.
Make the filling:
- Toss blueberries, brown sugar, lemon juice, flour and salt in a medium bowl. Pour the fruit into the crust.
- Crumble the remaining cornmeal mixture over the blueberries, pressing bits of the mixture together into large clumps as you go, as you would with a crisp or coffee-cake topping (note that it won’t cover the top entirely, more just create a nice sporadic covering, still allowing the blueberries and their juices to poke through).
- Bake tart until the blueberry filling is bubbly and thickened, and both the crust and top are nicely browned, 50–55 minutes.
- Let tart cool completely before slicing into triangles and serving. The tart can be baked up to 2 days ahead and stored tightly wrapped at room temperature or refrigerated (especially if your kitchen is hot or humid).
- EAT WITH: vanilla ice cream would be too obvious, but I don’t care.