Rye and Blueberry Breakfast Tarts for Busy Mornings

A recipe for blueberry-topped breakfast tarts with a rye and hemp granola bar bottom.


I like mornings. The barely there sun just cresting on the horizon, sending a soft glow through the still dark house. The light coming in through the curtains, sending lazy shadows across cool white sheets. The quiet gurgle of bubbles bursting on the surface of the water at the beginning of a boil. The hiss before the flame ignites before the burning lights. The crackle of shell and the sizzle of the egg blistering in the hot pan.

The reality of mornings with four kids that have a definite deadline for being out the door is rarely so idyllic.

A real morning. The room is still dark, but eyelids pry open at the sound likened to a car horn blaring through and cutting the thick air like a knife. The jostling of the eldest’s bed returns a grunt from beneath the sheets. Containers stacked on the counter, the refrigerator door popped open and sucked closed repeatedly. The hiss before the flame ignites is drowned out by my voice calling to the kids, begging them to turn down the sheets and pull weary legs from beneath their incubator blankets. Voices rise as they each vie to occupy the space of the lone bathroom.

Feet slap against the wood floors and echo down the hall as they make their way to the kitchen. Thank-yous are sung as plates are handed off, one by one. Lists of items not to be forgotten are rattled off as I stand over the counter with those containers, filling each one, packing four lunch sacks. Four sets of teeth are brushed within the three-foot–by–two-foot space, and then backpacks are handed off at the door with a kiss and a squeeze before they take off down the street.

A different sort of idyllic, perhaps.

The truth of the morning hours is that breakfast can make or break you. The mornings when kids need to be pried from their beds, superglued there to escape the brisk air, or those when the bathroom competition requires intervention and the homework sheets have sprouted legs and walked off in the night need a contingency plan that can be placed in front of the kids in moments and consumed just as quickly.

It is for those mornings that I have reserved these breakfast tarts. A granola-bar-like bottom made ahead and stored is filled with yogurt and topped with fresh berries in a moment. Placed before the salty, sand-filled eyes of children is this dessert pretending to be breakfast effectively pushing the reset button on the day’s start.

Grab the recipe for these Rye and Blueberry Breakfast Tarts over at Attune Foods, and while you’re there, be sure to check out the School Lunch eBook I helped put together to give you a few more ideas on what to pack inside all those school lunch containers that line the counter in the morning.