Kuchen de Mora

the German-Chilean blackberry tart of the southern lake country: dark wild moras set in a soft baked custard on a rich short pastry, the emblem of Chile's once-German south

Origin: Chile

From the journey of Blackberry.

Kuchen, the German word for cake, entered the Chilean kitchen with the German immigrants who settled the southern lake country around Valdivia, Osorno, and Llanquihue from the eighteen-fifties onward, and it took such deep root there that it became a thoroughly Chilean institution, a fixture of the onces, the afternoon coffee-and-cake ritual of the whole country. Of all the kuchen the south makes, the kuchen de mora is the most beloved, and it turns on an accident of ecology: the European bramble, brought to Chile in the nineteenth century, ran wild across the wet southern country and became an abundant free harvest, the mora or murra gathered every summer along the rural roads and fences. Married to the German baking the colonists brought, it gave a tart of a rich, buttery short pastry filled with dark wild blackberries set in a soft, lightly set custard, baked until the fruit bleeds its purple juice into the cream. It is the taste of the Chilean south in high summer, and the clearest expression of how a German pastry and a runaway European weed together made something wholly Chilean.

Ingredients

Pastry

  • 250 g plain flour
  • 125 g cold unsalted butter, cubed
  • 80 g caster sugar
  • 1 whole egg yolk
  • 2 tbsp cold milk, if needed

Filling

  • 500 g blackberries (moras), fresh or frozen

Custard

  • 2 whole eggs
  • 120 g caster sugar
  • 200 ml double cream
  • 2 tbsp plain flour
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

  1. Make the pastry: rub the cold butter into the flour and sugar until crumbly, then work in the egg yolk, adding a little cold milk only if needed to bring it to a dough. Flatten into a disc, wrap, and chill for 30 minutes.
  2. Heat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan). Roll or press the pastry into a 24 cm loose-bottomed tart tin, lining the base and sides. Prick the base, line with parchment and baking beans, and blind-bake for 12 minutes, then lift out the beans and bake for 5 minutes more until the base is dry and pale gold.
  3. Scatter the blackberries evenly over the pastry base. Whisk together the eggs, sugar, cream, 2 tbsp flour, and vanilla to a smooth custard, and pour it over the fruit so the berries are half-submerged.
  4. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until the custard is set with only a faint wobble at the centre and lightly golden, and the blackberries have bled their dark juice into it. Cool in the tin.
  5. Let the kuchen cool to room temperature so the custard sets fully, then dust with icing sugar and serve, in the Chilean way, with an afternoon coffee. It is best the day it is made but keeps a day in the fridge.

Notes

Wild moras give the most authentic tart, but any blackberry works, and frozen fruit, well drained, is fine (toss it with a spoon of flour first to soak up extra juice). Some southern Chilean cooks use a yeasted kuchen base rather than the short pastry, and many finish the tart with a crumbly streusel topping instead of, or as well as, the custard; the custard-set version given here, the kuchen de nata con mora, is among the most popular. The same tart is made across the south with murtilla, raspberries, or apples in place of the blackberry.

The Gastrographer

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