Vegan Blueberry Bakewell Tart
A favorite cousin whom we hadn't seen in over 15 years was coming to town and we were all eager to see her. Since she is a vegan, many emails flew back and forth to plan a lunch menu that she would enjoy. It's always my turn to bring dessert, so I was looking forward to my first vegan bake!
I decided to make a Blueberry Bakewell Tart because blueberries are such a summer favorite for everyone and most people like almond. As I've written before, I love making tarts. They're easy, delicious and always look so pretty. I found this recipe for a raspberry bakewell tart and decided to substitute blueberry jam and blueberries for the raspberries. The recipe does say it's fine to do this.
I used Earth Balance vegan butter. A long time ago our family tried avoiding dairy and we used Earth Balance for a few things. We'd even ordered vegan pumpkin pies one from a local bakery one Thanksgiving and found them better than their regular pies! So I was optimistic about it but in the end I didn't like using this butter. It's oily and softens faster than regular butter, which is OK for a shortcut pastry (pâte sucrée) but would be difficult, I think, for a flaky pastry crust (pâte brisée). Looking at the list of ingredients this is no surprise, since the first ingredients are several oils. In general, the ingredients are quite off-putting compared to the ingredients in regular butter, and it's hard to imagine this product could really be better for one's health than butter.
Ingredients in regular butter
This recipe has a flaw in that it does not tell you how much water to use. Usually I dislike making tart crust in a food processor. The liquid always pools at the bottom, and anyway I'd rather get a feel for it with the pastry cutter. But seeing how quickly the vegan butter softened, I decided to follow the instructions in the recipe and make it in the processor. The crust is supposed to come together into a ball, but that never happened after adding 5 tablespoons of water (on a humid day). When I took this crust out of the food processor and put it on the counter, I could see immediately that it had too much water. I refrigerated it just in case, but I made another batch of dough. To this batch I only added 3.5 tablespoons of water. At that point I could pinch bits that stuck together so I stopped adding water.
I didn't care for how the dough handled. When I transferred it into the tart pan it broke off in pieces. With pate sucrée it's not such a big deal because you can easily patch it where needed and that's what I did. Maybe I should have added more water, but I still think this had more to do with the vegan butter.
This recipe makes quite a bit of dough. In order to roll out this crust as thin as I like I had to roll it out to a 15" round! Usually you are good with 12-13 inches. With all this extra crust, you could definitely use this dough recipe in a 10" inch tart pan.
The recipe calls for 150 grams of blueberries but I upped it to about 225 grams because looking at other recipes they all had more blueberries. I kind of eyeballed this, as well as the almonds where instead of 2 handfuls I pressed in one heaping handful and left it at that.
Usually tart shells are blind baked at 375 or even higher. This recipe calls for blind baking at 350 and since I'm not used to vegan butter that's what I did. But after the designated time, the tart shell was still pretty pale. I took it out, though, because it looked dry.
The tart ready to go in the oven
Now to put in the filled tart to bake. It's supposed to bake for 30-45 minutes at 350. Now that is a very big range and a temperature a bit on the lower side. I've written before about my oven temperature being unreliable, even when using oven thermometers. When I checked the tart at 30 minutes it was clearly nowhere near done. Nor was it done at 45 minutes. At that point I increased the temperature to 375 and started checking at 5 minute intervals. I lost track of how much extra time it ended up taking until a toothpick inserted in the center came out clean, but it was definitely over an hour. I also don't quite know what the temperature was, because I kept playing with it and of course I was opening the oven door.
Ultimately I took the tart out because I had to leave. I was already late for a friend's birthday party and a toothpick looked clean enough. I was a bit concerned that the tart hadn't really browned, but I also didn't want to overbake it.
The next day I packed the tart in my pie keeper and we drove the 3 hours to FIL's house where we were meeting our cousin. It was a warm day and I placed the tart on the back seat in front of the air conditioner vent. A couple of hours later when we were almost there I glanced back, and Bubby had pushed the tart all the way over to the end of the seat where the sun had been hitting it the entire time. I was quite upset about this.
When I took the tart out of the pie keeper, it had an unpleasant smell. It wasn't spoiled or undercooked, it's just the smell of the vegan butter. As I cut it I could tell that parts of the frangipane were gluey. The crust had baked up well, but I was surprised that after such a long time in the oven it was very light on the bottom, whereas I had been worried it might be burned. In general I didn't care for the taste of the tart. I used an inexpensive blueberry jam from Aldi, and that didn't yield a great taste either. I took a few bites and didn't finish my slice. I was gratified that everyone else finished theirs, and the guest of honor was grateful and said she liked it. But FIL, who always showers my every bake with compliments, stayed silent although he did finish his piece. That's quite telling!
Five days later there's a leftover piece in the fridge that no one has claimed, not even Bubby who usually and to my distress asks in front of everyone if there will be any left over to bring home. I think that tells me everything I need to know about this recipe. I think in a Bakewell tart, raspberries pair better with frangipane than blueberries, and I am never using vegan butter again. Or at least, until our cousin visits next time!
After baking the tart looks almost
as light as when it went in the oven.
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