Blueberry and white chocolate tartuffins

I think fall is really starting to rev up. We had our last day of summer last Friday, and then the weather changed quite noticeably. The evenings are cold, and it's cold getting out of bed in the morning. I know it's nowhere near to how cold it will be, but this is the first time I feel I want to snuggle up in my fleece robe in the mornings, and not change into work clothes at all. The car is cold in the mornings, and it only gets warm by the first big roundabout. In just a week I have gone from blasting the A/C on maximum cool to maximum heating. Leaves are turning brown, the tomato production has dwindled down and I doubt there will be much more red tomatoes coming. Time for that last batch of green tomato chutney. We did get four big tubs of tomatoes on Sunday when we picked everything we could find, and made a gigantic serving of tomato sauce for the winter. My dahlias are still going strong in the garden, the only colourful spots left along with a few flowers on the fuchsia. The pics below were taken on Monday this week, in the pouring rain. Although leaves are starting to turn rather colourful as well. It's definitely time for something cheery in the kitchen department to counteract all the fall sadness. I know there are a lot of people out there who love the change of seasons and the colder, crisper air but I'm not one of them. From now on it's just going to be cold, dark, miserable and dreary until it's spring again.

When I saw these blueberry tarts on The English Kitchen I couldn't resist.  They simply looked so delicious. However, I wanted to take them into work, and I don't have enough tart tins to make many tarts (and I wanted to make mine a bit smaller anyways), so I decided to make them in muffin tins instead. So they became tartuffins. I also decided to add some white chocolate in here. You know, just because why not. I didn't use the pastry recipe in the original post, I used my favourite pastry here. But I'm sure whichever pastry you use, they will be fabulous. I made one serving of the pastry and doubled the filling to make about 16 of these babies. 

Blueberry and white chocolate tartuffins (makes about 16):
For the pastry (recipe stolen from The Purple Spoon):
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp sugar
225 g unsalted butter
1/4-1/2 cup ice cold water

For the filling (double amount if you make the full serving of pastry above):
45 g unsalted butter
90 g caster sugar
1 medium egg
1/2 tsp vanilla (I used vanilla paste)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
90 g plain flour
a few handfuls of blueberries
another few handfuls of white chocolate chips
(3-4 tbsp apricot jam)

The howto:
Start by preparing the crust, as it needs to sit in the fridge for a while. Using a pastry cutter or your hands, rub together the flour, salt, sugar and butter until it resembles coarse sand. Add water until it forms a non-sticky dough. Wrap in cling film and let rest in the fridge for 30 minutes to an hour while you prepare the filling.

For the filling, beat the butter and sugar until creamy. Add the egg and keep on whisking. Mix all the dry ingredients and fold into the batter. 

Preheat oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F). Roll the pastry on a floured worktop, and use a cutter or large glass to cut out circles. Line your muffin tin with the pastry and add the filling. Sprinkle with blueberries and white chocolate chips. Bake for 35-40 minutes until the filling is golden brown and has slightly risen. The original recipe had a final step of melting the apricot jam, and brushing it over the tartuffins, but I skipped this step. 

The verdict:
My colleagues certainly didn't complain when I took these in to work, and they all disappeared in a more or less flattering length of time. The one reason I might make these in small tart tins next time is that you get a larger surface area, and therefore you are able to get in more blueberries as they really are the key to the deliciousness. The more blueberries, the more moist and delicious your bakes will be. The white chocolate adds a lovely sweetness and I would certainly not leave it out. I have to admit I was a bit lazy and didn't quite roll the pastry thin enough, so there was a bit too much pastry to filling in each tartuffin, again supporting the idea of making them in the shape of tarts rather than muffins the next time. But all in all, as a solution to the problem of not having enough tart tins, this worked really well I think. I do love a great pie crust, and I can't resist muffins, so combining the two seem to make perfect sense.