Tarte Tatin
Deliciously sweet apples with puff pastry
Apparently Tarte Tatin, named after the French hotel in which it was first served, should be made with shortcrust pastry. So says Mr F, Tom's papa. I've always made this French classic with puff pastry, however, and think the flakiness adds a certain je ne sais quoi. In the end Mr F was convinced, I think!
I always use ready-made pastry to save time, and it works best with sweet dessert apples such as Braeburn, Cox’s or Granny Smith's. Tarte Tatin is best served with a generous dollop of whipped cream.
Ingredients
- About 4-5 dessert apples
- 1 roll ready to use all-butter puff pastry
- 100g sugar (demerara or caster)
- 80g salted butter
Method
- Peel, core and quarter enough apples to fill the dish you are using. I usually use a Pyrex-style glass dish measuring 18x30cm and about 7 cm deep.
- Arrange the apple quarters in the dish, rounded-side down.
- Heat the sugar until it has melted and turned a golden caramel colour. Remove from the heat and stir in the butter.
- Pour the butter and sugar mixture over the apples as soon as possible - before the mixture begins to harden.
- Cook in the oven for 30 minutes at 180°C. After this time, the apples will be soft and there should be lots of juice.
- Remove from the oven and cover the apples with the puff pastry. Tuck the pastry down inside the dish and prick a few holes.
- Return the dish to the oven until the pastry is cooked. This should take around 30 minutes.
- Once cooked, allow to cool. The traditional way of serving this tart is apple-side up, so you may wish to turn it upside down on to a serving dish.
- Whip up some cream or ice cream to serve and enjoy! Bon appétit!
NB This recipe makes 6 , but if you save it to your MyMeals365 app, you can change the number of servings and the app will work out the exact quantities of each ingredient you need.