Puff pastry, sweet gooey marzipan, juicy baked fruit and it is ready to dazzle in around 30 minutes.

Oh yeah baby.

My Mum always has puff pastry in the freezer and is a master of fruit tarts; therefore, I have inherited this love and have moved to new heights of pleasure as a result of my recent love affair with marzipan. I can’t get enough of the stuff – it’s most peculiar. Only warm though – I’ll probably still pick it off fruit cakes, but we’ll wait and see what Christmas brings before I commit to that.

You know, if you don’t like marzipan, just leave it out of this recipe; just put the fruit on the pastry and serve – maybe with a little whipped cream? Just a suggestion…

These are SO easy and SO delicious, it’s incredible.

First, get a pack of butter puff pastry from the supermarket (or drive over to your Mum’s and use hers because you have run out and didn’t realise). It really must be butter.

This is one of the 2 pieces in the pack – each weighing 250g.

Roll it out and cut into squares, triangles, circles (use a cookie cutter), whatever size and shape you fancy. You don’t have to be precise and mathematical – it’ll rise and puff in the oven anyway.

Roll out some marzipan to a similar thickness, although that’s not terribly important either, and either cut it to fit like a slightly smaller sheet over the pastry, or cut into thin strips like I did here. Lay it on top of the pastry.

Get some fruit out – I used sliced nectarines, blueberries and raspberries (from our garden!). Consider peaches, figs, blackberries, loganberries, thinly sliced apple, pear,plums? Arrange the fruit on top of the marzipan.

So pretty.

Sieve some icing sugar over them – or caster sugar if you like

Bake at GM6/400F/200C for 20 mins.

Remove to a wire rack to cool and add some more icing sugar if you wish. It’s just so patisserie, but so easy.

They’re lovely at room temperature and positively addictive when still slightly warm from the oven. Of all the things I bake, this is the one thing I have most trouble walking away from. I could clear that wire rack in minutes, I tell you.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

———

Marzipan Fruit Puff Tarts

PRINT THIS (NOT) RECIPE (Opens in a new window)

500g all butter puff pastry – thawed if frozen
500g marzipan
1 nectarine
some raspberries
some blueberries
icing sugar

Preheat oven to GM6/400F/200C

Roll the pastry out to the thickness of a coin.
Cut into shapes – squares, strips, circles (use a cookie cutter), triangles or just make one large tart.

Roll the marzipan out to a similar thickness.
Cut shapes just slightly smaller than the ones you have cut the pastry into, or cut the marzipan into thin-ish strips and nestle them on top of the pastry.

Arrange the fruit of your choice on top of the marzipan.
Consider most fruits (I wouldn’t recommend strawberries or bananas – they can go a bit weird in the oven) such as sliced peaches, figs, blackberries, loganberries, thinly sliced apple, pear, plums, anything you fancy.

Dust with icing sugar and bake for 20 mins.

Remove to a wire rack to cool. Dust with more icing sugar if you think it could take it. Serve at room temperature or warm – reheat for 5 mins if necessary.

I wanted a quick, easy recipe that used blueberries; something that wasn’t groaning with icings or glazes and wasn’t bettered with a dollop of cream. A real old fashioned afternoon tea bite for kids and adults alike.

This is it. Fling your ingredients in a bowl, clatter round it with an electric hand whisk, stir in the fruit then dollop into a muffin tin and remove, bronzed and perky (the buns too) to be inhaled and devoured gleefully. Soft, vanilla-y, blueberried and sweet. Yum.

5 mins to weigh the ingredients, 5 mins to mix and portion out and 20 mins in the oven. Perfick.

Let me show you my caster sugar:

Keep your caster in a canister and bung dried old vanilla pods into it. Smells and tastes good. Nigella’s idea.  Do you know I once saw a jar of vanilla sugar for something like £4?  I nearly fainted.

Anyway, use this if you do it, if not, use normal caster sugar – no biggie.

Put your ingredients (except the blueberries) into a large bowl

then using an electric hand whisk (or a normal hand whisk if you feel like it), combine all the ingredients until they’ve come together – took less than 10 seconds. It’ll look like this:

See there’s some residual flour at the bottom? I am always mindful of not over handling flour, so don’t try and get every molecule added – it’ll get swept in with the blueberries.

Add your blueberries and fold them in

Grease a 12 hole muffin tin either with butter, or line with papers or use this stuff ( I got it at a shop in Brighton, but you don’t want to know how much I paid for it; that said it is brilliant)

Divide the mixture among the tin

and top with the remaining berries (don’t think I’d bother with that again – just bung the lot in)

Bake for 20 minutes

leave in the tin for 5 mins, then loosen and remove to a wire rack to cool

Mmmm.

I’ve cooled them and put them in the freezer – I think I’ll be glad of those come early September when we’re entering the world of regular lunchboxing.

Or, I might be glad of them one evening when someone has gone fishing.

Shhhh.

October 2009 – We are still having the odd frozen bun for the lunchbox and I had to update to say they freeze brilliantly. I wrap one frozen bun in a piece of kitchen roll and put it straight into the lunchbox – they defrost evenly and are really moist.

Here’s the recipe

Quick Fast Blueberry Buns
PRINT THIS RECIPE (opens in a new window)
100g unsalted butter, softened
100g vanila sugar (I keep vanilla pods in my canister of sugar – don’t worry if you don’t; just use normal caster)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
150g self raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
100g blueberries

Preheat oven to GM4/180C/350F.
Spray 12 hole muffin tin with greasing spray or butter or line with muffin cases.

Put the butter, sugar, vanilla, eggs, flour and baking powder into a large bowl and using an electric hand whisk, whisk until together and creamy – this took about 10 seconds.
Add 75g of the blueberries – or all of them, no worries -  and stir in with a spatula (you’ll also fold in any residual flour, so don’t whisk it to death to start with).

Divide the mixture among the muffin holes and top with the remaining blueberries if you wish.
Bake for 20 mins or until risen nicely and golden brown.

Leave in the tin for 5 minutes, then loosen with a spatula and remove to a wire rack to cool.