Tarte tatin – the most fun you can have with apples
I had 3 kilos of apples and ran a Twitter poll: tarte tatin or applesauce. Tarte tatin was the (unsurprising) winner with 83% of the vote. I won’t swim against the social media tide on food – so here we go with apple tart, French style.
This is not an easy recipe and it took me several attempts before my results were reliable. Realistically, three attempts that were edible but not photogenic; full of runny sugar and messy. The fourth time – I resolved to not to chicken out when cooking the apples in the sugar syrup. The point is to make caramel, not syrup. If you’re a candy maker or a jam maker – you should do okay. If you have no experience of working with boiling sugar – don’t start here and don’t start alone. Try making some. caramel sauce first, for example.
I used Cook’s Illustrated recipe. It’s the only cooking website I value enough to pay for. When they say they’ve cracked a recipe, they have. This is a different approach to a classic recipe but the results are worth it.
Want a vegan version? Probably easier than you think. Use vegan puff pastry (most supermarket ready pastry is vegan because they’ve taken the butter out to save money). And use top quality flavourless oil, about 60 mls, instead of butter in the sugar syrup.
There is one important piece of equipment you need. A 23 cm (9 inch) skillet or casserole dish that can go from a high heat stove top to the oven. I have a le cresuet enamelled cast iron dish that is perfect.
Feeling brave enough to venture on? Here we go with the recipe.
Recipe
Pastry Dough
- 230 grams plain flour
- 30 grams icing sugar (confectioners sugar)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 110 grams chilled unsalted butter, cut into cubes (tip – cut it then chill it)
- 1 large egg
- Water if needed
Caramelised apples
- 110 grams unsalted butter
- 160 grams caster (granulated) sugar
- 1.4 kilos (3 pounds) apples (cored, peeled, cut into halves or quarters)
Instructions – these are in the order I recommend you do them, so start with pastry, move to apples and then assemble.
Method
- Making pastry using a food processor: combine flour, sugar and salt in the processor with the steel blade. Mix. Sprinkle the chilled butter over the top. Process until well mixed. Mine was about 30 seconds of pulsing. Turn the mixture into a bowl, add the egg and mix with a fork until little balls start to form. Gather into a ball with your hands. If it’s dry, add water a teaspoon at a time to get it to form into a ball. Wrap the dough in plastic, squish into a 10 cm (4 inch) disk. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
- Making pastry by hand: mix the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Cut the butter in with a pastry blender or two tables knives. Proceed with adding the egg.
- After 30 minutes, take the pastry out. Flour your counter top and roll the pastry to 25 cm round. Put on a baking tray, cover and return to the refrigerator.
- Your pastry is chilling. Now time to get on with the apples. You want to end up with relatively uniform size pieces. I had lots of small apples so I cored, peeled and halved 12 apples. I confessing I had two pieces left over so I ate them.
- You may feel the urge to put your apples in lemon juice to keep them from browning as you proceed to peel and core the whole lots. It’s not necessary (you’re going to caramelise them and turn them really brown) and it changes the chemistry of the sugar. You can do this but if you do you must rinse the lemon juice off and then dry them. They don’t need to be bone dry but no obvious water on them.
- You’ve got all your apples pieces ready. Because I’m a little bit obsessed I trim the pieces so that they are roughly the same height. You are stand them up in the sugar and it makes the tarte pretty if they are all the same size. Not necessary though and by now you may well be bored messing around with apples.
- Melt the second lot of butter in your 23 cm pan on the stove top. Mix the sugar in. Now it’s time to put the apples in. If using small apples like mine – stand them up in the sugar and fit in as many as you can, like doing a jigsaw. If using big apples, quarter them and lay them on their sides in a circle near the edge of the pan. Fill in the centre with a few pieces. Some of the apples will be exposed above the butter and sugar mixture. This is okay.
- Put your oven on – preheat to 190C, 375F.
- Put the pan back on the heat and turn it up high. Once it’s bubbling, cook for about 10 minutes. You will be tempted to turn it down. Don’t. I stand over it and watch it like a hawk, rotating the pan 90 degrees on the burner every minute or so to reduce hotspots and scorching. After 10 minutes, remove from heat and carefully using the point of a knife, flip each apple pieces over so the uncooked side is now in the liquid sugar. Cook until the juices turn amber and are visibly thickened, probably another 5 minutes but possibly longer.
- You’ve turned butter and sugar to caramel, now it’s time to assemble the tarte. Be very careful: hot pan, hot contents. Remove from heat and carefully place the pastry on top of the apples. Press down lightly so that no pastry is overhanging. It doesn’t need to look great – it’s the bottom of the tart. Put it in the oven for 25 to 30 minutes and bake until the crust is golden brown.
- Remove from oven and place the pan on a wire rack or trivet that will allow it to cool. Leave for about 20 minutes. Now loosen the edges with a knife, place a heat resistant flat plate over the top and flip it upside down. Use a generous sized plate or cake stand and be prepared with some kitchen paper towels for remnants of liquid sugar. Pry out any apples that remained in the pan and stick them back in the tarte.
- Serve warm or allow to cool. Enjoy with sour cream, whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.
Apples, cored and ready for peeling. 
Peeled, rinsed, dried and trimmed to roughly same size.
Thank you for reading, baking the recipes and commenting. I have a special request for a future blog – some spectacular chocolate chip cookies. That may be preceded by a blog on lovely bean soup but it’s coming your way soon.