Tarte aux myrtilles

Blueberries are by far my favorite berry, and this has been true for as long as I can remember. Something about their color (blue), their size (tiny), and their taste (tart and sweet) really appeals to me. As luck would have it, much like blackcurrant in Burgundy, blueberries are the emblematic berry in the Vosges, where they grow by the bushload up the steep mountain slopes, and go by the name of brimbelles.

When we went to the market yesterday morning, all the produce stands had them, in sumptuous overflowing crates, and I pleaded with my mother for us to bake a tarte aux myrtilles: the family tradition (read: weird rule) is to stick to the blueberries we pick ourselves, but for some reason it’s still a bit early this year to find any on our side of the mountain. And yet, I really really wanted a blueberry tart, and I was going back to Paris just a couple of days later, and I wouldn’t be there anymore when they were fully in season and we could go blueberry-hunting with our little buckets and climb up above the paths and take care not to step on the shrubs and risk our lives and turn our fingers blue and compare the weight of our respective bounties when we get home and bake cakes and tarts and make jam.

So my mother said all right, all right, we’ll buy blueberries and make a tart.

And so we did, enjoying it in the veranda at teatime, when we returned from our daily afternoon hike. I’m not sure if it is the sweet crunchy crust, or the soft and intensely flavorful fruit layer, or the bright blue smiles everyone has afterward, but really, aren’t blueberry tarts something.

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I am currently spending a few days with my family in the Vosges, a mountain range in the East of France where my parents have a vacation house. One of the great pleasures of being there, besides enjoying the garden, taking walks up and down the mountain, and sleeping soundly in the perfect quiet, is baking with my mother. This is something I used to do often when I still lived with my parents, but now that I’m a big girl with my own place and all, these occasions aren’t so frequent and are to be cherished.

The bottom of the cake is nicely dense, its sweetness lovely against the tart apricots, and the top of the cake is deliciously moist from the fruit and the creamy topping.

The cake you see here I didn’t actually bake, as my mother made it before my sister and I got off the train from Paris yesterday. But I did eat it for the goûter in the afternoon, and it was absolutely delightful, which hardly comes as a surprise when my mom bakes. The bottom of the cake is nicely dense, its sweetness lovely against the tart apricots, and the top of the cake is deliciously moist from the fruit and the creamy topping.

I asked my mother if she would be willing to share the recipe with C&Z readers, and she said, “Oui, bien sûr!” She explained that it came from Woman’s Journal, a now defunct British magazine she liked to read, and which my father always picked up for her when his work took him to London.

She brought me the page she had clipped out: the theme of the article was “American Bakes” and it included — oddly enough — a Mincemeat Crumble Cake. But when she took a closer look at the recipe, she said, “Wait. Actually, that’s not how I do it at all,” and proceeded to walk me through her version, which was indeed quite different from the one in print.

So it seems that the inability to follow a recipe runs in the family, and it is my mom’s Apricot Coffee Cake, of course, that I share with you below.

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What is referred to as Bastille Day in the US is simply called le 14 juillet in France. What our national holiday celebrates, in case you don’t know, is the day in 1789 when the French revolutionaries seized the Bastille prison, which was seen as a symbol of the royal oppression (it turned out to hold but a disappointing handful of half-forgotten and anonymous prisoners, but that’s not what history chose to remember).

Le 14 juillet is a celebration with military parades, fireworks and bals des pompiers, those dances traditionally organized on village squares by the local fire brigade, and where many a happy couple was formed in the olden days, when the occasions to waltz were otherwise scarce.

When I was little, my family was usually on vacation in the mountains in mid-July, and the fireworks were a huge thing to look forward to and a unique opportunity to stay up late. There was also the exciting responsibility of holding a lampion, one of those colorful paper lanterns hooked to the end of a long stick, during the retraite aux flambeaux, a candle-lit walk around the town center to the fanfare music of drums and trumpets. And always, the heart-clenching fear that it would, quite literally, rain on our parade, and that the fireworks would have to be canceled.

But, to my knowledge, there is no special food tradition associated with the 14 juillet. This is not so surprising, considering that the original events of 1789 were initiated in great part because the French people was suffering a terrible famine, while the aristocracy held fantastic feasts in the privacy of their castles.

It isn’t really customary either to wish anyone a happy 14th of July, like one might at Christmas (Joyeux Noël) or Easter (Joyeuses Pâques), but I like well wishes and would like to extend that one to you: Joyeux 14 Juillet!

Les Abeilles is a tiny little store perched at the top of the Butte-aux-Cailles, in the 13th arrondissement, and incidently just a skip and a hop from my office (which has, in passing, been trying quite hard to keep me away from my regular blogging schedule, sending me this way and that, thus tragically depriving me of a decent Internet connection in the evening).

As the name implies to the French-friendly ear, Les Abeilles is a beekeeping store, which is unusual enough in Paris. They sell you a certain number of tools and ingredients and foodstuff and vitamins to take care of your beehives, and they themselves actually own and maintain a few in the nearby Kellerman park, which I find utterly fascinating (fume-flavored honey, anyone?). But about apiculture I know next to nothing, so I won’t dwell on that, but will certainly look into it when I get a chance, as this is bound to be the next hip thing to do with your balcony. Won’t my neighbors just love that.

Besides beekeeping gear, and this is the reason why I walked into the store in the first place, Les Abeilles also sells a range of bee-derived products : body care products, gelée royale, propolis (that magic golden stuff that looks like wax and that you’re supposed to ingest in small quantities to strengthen your immune system), and — let’s cut to the chase and talk about what we’re really interested in — honey-based food products.

They have a quite impressive range of different honeys, in small, medium or large jars, produced by bees fed on different kinds of pollen, from flowers or shrubs or trees. You can sample any of them with mini ice-cream spoons, from a tray of jars dedicated to that purpose. In addition to “simple” honeys, they offer spreads that are a mix of honey and nuts, allowing you to start the day with a honey-hazelnut toast for instance — quite the energy boost I’m sure. They also sell nonettes, those small honey cakes filled with orange marmelade or some other kind of jam (quite similar to the mignonnettes I bought in Bourogne), and I remember seeing some bonbons au miel, those little hard candies made with honey, traditionally used as a fine remedy against sore-throats.

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