Necessity is the mother of invention – this saying yet again proved itself, when it came to this recipe. One day I had some quark (cottage cheese) and some blueberries left and I was thinking how I could use them. The easiest solution – cheesecake – wouldn’t have worked as I didn’t have enough of the cheese so a tart seemed to be a better answer. Sadly, the outcome wasn’t as good as I expected because I found the filling of the tart too grainy.
But a few days later I wanted to give this cake concept another chance and used cream cheese instead of the quark. This time the result was heavenly: a scrumptious tart with melt-in-your-mouth filling that tasted a bit like New York cheesecake but with a bonus – juicy blueberries bursting in your mouth with every bite of this cake.
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- <div class=”nobullets”>Base:</div>
- 190g plain flour,
- 130g butter of room temperature (plus a bit extra for greasing),
- 35ml milk of room temperature,
- 1 tbsp caster sugar,
- 1 egg yolk,
- pinch of salt,
- <div class=”nobullets”>Filling:</div>
- 600g cream cheese, *
- 150ml of double cream,*
- 3 eggs,*
- 120g caster sugar,
- 1 tsp vanilla extract,
- 100g blueberries.
- Using a food processor or manually combine quickly all the cake ingredients, form a flattened ball, cover it in cling film and put to a fridge for at least 2 hours.
- Butter well a bottom and a side of a 26cm-diameter loose-bottom tart tin.
- Preheat an oven to 220 Celsius degrees (200 for fan ovens).
- Roll the pastry thinly (best done between 2 sheets of baking paper) and transfer it into the tin.
- Pierce the pastry with a fork a few times and line it with baking paper, put baking beans on top.
- Transfer the tin to the hot oven and immediately decrease the temperature to 190 Celsius degrees (170 for fan ovens); bake for 15 minutes. Remove the paper and beans and bake for 5 minutes more.
- Mix together the cream cheese, cream, eggs, sugar and vanilla extract until combined and smooth.
- Pour it over the baked base and sprinkle the blueberries on top.
- Decrease the oven temperature to 150 Celsius degrees (no fan), put the tart to the oven and bake for 40 min.
- After that time turn off the oven but keep the cake in for 2 hours; afterwards transfer to a fridge.
- Take it out from the fridge 30 minutes before serving.
