TwD: Baked Yogurt Tart with Red Currants and Wild Blueberries

Today we are making a Baked Yogurt Tart for the Tuesdays with Dorie group. The contributing baker for this recipe is Leslie Mackie.

The recipe for this wonderful simple tart is a two step process. You begin with preparing a Flaky Pie Dough, using all purpose flour (I used spelt flour), salt, cold unsalted butter, vegetable shortening  and ice water. After you prepare the pie dough, it needs a two hour rest in the fridge. Then you roll it out, fit it into your springfrom pan (I used a French tart pan with high sides and a removable bottom), chill the dough some more, and blind bake for a good 25 minutes or until the crust is lightly golden and set.

While the pre-baked pie shell cools on a rack, you can prepare the lovely filling using three eggs (I used organic), sugar, yogurt, flour, and vanilla extract (I used homemade vanilla sugar instead) and, of course, lovely berries or fruit – depending on the season.

Yogurt is packed with calcium, protein and B vitamins. It is made by adding a number of types of harmless bacteria to milk, causing it to ferment. This thickens it and gives it its characteristically tangy flavor. Cow's milk is the most common type used, but goat's, ewe's, sheep or buffalo's milk are also suitable. Most yogurt sold around here are “live”, which means that the yogurt still contains live bacteria. There are a number of different types to choose from. I chose whole milk organic yogurt, it is made from whole organic milk, it is a live yogurt that has been fermented with live culture bacteria and it has a smooth, creamy texture and a fresh, slightly tangy flavor. And organic yogurt has had additional “friendly” bacteria added to it and it has the mildest flavor and a particularly creamy texture, therefore making it the perfect choice for this Baked Yogurt Tart.

For the fruits I chose my favorite berries, red currants and wild blueberries. Red currants add a lovely splash of color to this tart. They are pretty, bright red, juicy berries with a tart, sparkling flavor. Fresh red currants are essential in summer pudding, but also marry beautifully with wild blueberries for this simply elegant tart.

In German-speaking areas, red currants are called “Johannisbeeren” because the red currants ("John's berry" in German) are said to ripen first on St. John's Day, also known as Midsummer Day, June 24. So we are just at the start of the red currant season right now and I had a bit of a hard time finding some because the weather has been rather cool around here.

Once the baked tart shell had cooled sufficiently, I mixed up the ingredients for the yogurt filling, added the
fruit and baked the tart for about 50 minutes. Instead of chopped almonds, I used chopped bright green pistachios to sprinkle around the edge of the tart.

We liked this tart quite a bit, it tasted a bit like a vanilla custard/cheesecake tart – what a nice and pretty dessert and quite different from the yogurt cakes that I usually bake, yogurt for the filling itself was "a first" for me and we liked it in this tart.

To see what the other members of the Tuesdays with Dorie group thought of this Baked Yogurt Tart, please click here.