Blueberry Ricotta Tartlettes

Photo: Sara Bonetti

Ingredients

For the tartlettes dough

1 cup and ½ al l purpose flour

1/2 cup confectioners' sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

130 grams (4 and ½ oz or 1 stick plus 1 tbps) very cold unsalted butter, cut

into small pieces

1 egg yolk

For the ricotta cream and decoration

200 grams ricotta

80 grams confectioners' sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

blueberries

Preparation

O make the dough*:

Put the flour, confectioners' sugar and salt in the bowl of a food processor and pulse a couple of times to combine. Scatter the pieces of butter over the dry ingredients and pulse until the butter is cut in coarsely - you'll have pieces the size of oatmeal flakes and pea-size pieces and that's just fine. Stir the egg, just to break it up, and add it a little at a time, pulsing after each addition. When the egg is in, process in long pulses - about 10 seconds each - until the dough, which will look granular soon after the egg is added, forms clumps and curds. Just before your reaches this clumpy stage, the sound of the machine working the dough will change - heads up. Turn the dough out onto a work surface.

Very lightly and sparingly - make that very, very lightly and sparingly - knead the dough just to incorporate any dry ingredients that might have escaped mixing.

Press the dough into a tart pan, or a tartlettes pan in my case.

To make a press-in crust: Butter the tart pan and press the dough evenly along the bottom and up the sides of the pan. Don't be stingy - you want a crust with a little heft because you want to be able to both taste and feel it. Also, don't be too heavy-handed - you want to press the crust in so that the pieces cling to one another and knit together when baked, but you don't want to press so hard that the crust loses its crumbly texture. Freeze the crust for at least 30 minutes, preferably longer, before baking.

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Butter the shiny side of a piece of aluminum foil and fit the foil tightly against the crust. Bake the crust for about 30 minutes, then carefully remove the foil. If the crust has puffed, press it down gently with the back of a spoon. Transfer the crust to a cooling rack and let cool completely.

Note: these are the directions as given by Dorie Greenspan in her book. I did the dough by hands and it still came out super good. As always (don't hate me for repeating this every time) you just have to make sure to not overwork the dough if you work it by hand.

To make the ricotta cream:

Mix together the ricotta, the confectioners' sugar and the cinnamon. Refrigerate for at least one hour before using it.

To assemble:

Spread the ricotta cream over the tartlettes shells, top with blueberries and enjoy!