Week 18: Tarte Tatin

Tarte Tatin

The tarte Tatin (tart tat-tan) sounds really fancy. This is another bake that we wanted to try after having watched The Great British Baking Show. Seems like everybody bakes a tarte Tatin at some point in any cooking competition. It always looks so pretty and most people are happy to eat caramelized apples and pastry.

The origins of the tarte Tatin are obviously French but it has spread to other countries over the years. It is named after the Tatin sisters who invented it and served it in their hotel as its signature dish. It is a pastry in which the fruit (usually apples) is caramelized in butter and sugar and covered with pastry before it is baked. Once it is baked, it is inverted so the pastry is on the bottom and the caramelized apples are on the top. Some stories say it was made on accident or as a way to save time, but, usually if more than one story exists, nobody really knows.

This is one of the few recipes that had few substitutions. When making caramel, real sugar is a necessity. Sugar substitutes just down brown and caramelize the way sugar does. Our only real substitution was switching white whole wheat flour for the all-purpose. We have had decent results on other pastries making this substitution so we felt safe doing so. Our other substitution, which doesn’t amount to much, was using Pink Lady apples instead of Granny Smith. I had been reading about cooking different apples and it was suggested to use Pink Lady because they don’t get mushy like the Granny Smith can. I was fine with that because Pink Lady apples are my favorite…I eat one every day…so there wouldn’t be any uneaten leftovers if we had too many. Finally, we didn’t make the cream topping because we figured half the people testing it would want ice cream and, as usual, this wasn’t going to be eaten in one sitting. We included it because it is part of the recipe and we thought it would be a good balance for the sweetness of the dessert.

Our recipe this week came from our Cook’s Illustrated Baking cookbook. At least until we had to change gears midway through…more about that later!

Ingredients

Pastry Dough

• 1 ⅓ cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus extra for work surfaces
• ¼ cup confectioners’ sugar½ teaspoon table salt
• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick), chilled and cut into 1/4-inch pieces
• 1 large egg (cold), beaten

Caramelized Apples

• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick)
• ¾ cup granulated sugar, plus 1 tablespoon
• 3 pounds Granny Smith apples (about 6 large 8-ounce apples), peeled, quartered, and cored

Cream Topping

• 1 cup heavy cream, cold
• ½ cup sour cream, cold

Method

FOR THE PASTRY: 1. Mix flour, sugar, and salt in food processor fitted with steel blade. 2. Scatter butter over dry ingredients; process until mixture resembles cornmeal, 7 to 12 seconds. 3. Turn mixture into medium bowl; add egg and stir with fork until little balls form. 4. Press balls together with back of fork, then gather dough into ball with hands. 5. Wrap in plastic, then flatten into 4-inch disk. Refrigerate at least 30 minutes. (Can be refrigerated overnight; let stand at room temperature to warm slightly before further use.) 6. Unwrap dough and turn out onto well-floured work surface. Sprinkle with additional flour. 7. Starting from disk center outward, roll dough into 12-inch circle, strewing flour underneath to prevent sticking. 8. Slide lightly floured, rimless cookie sheet or pizza peel under crust, cover with plastic, and refrigerate while preparing apples. 9. Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position; heat oven to 375 degrees.

FOR THE FILLING: 1. Melt butter in 9-inch skillet or tarte Tatin pan; remove from heat and sprinkle evenly with sugar. 2. Arrange apples in skillet overlapping them starting on the outside and working in. 3. Return skillet to high heat; cook until juices turn from butterscotch to rich amber color, 10 to 12 minutes. 4. Remove skillet from heat and, using fork or tip of paring knife, turn apples onto uncaramelized sides. 5. Return skillet to highest heat; boil to cook uncaramelized sides of apples, about 5 minutes longer. 6. Remove skillet from heat. Slide prepared dough over skillet, and, taking care not to burn fingers, tuck dough edges gently against skillet wall. 7. Bake until crust is golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes. 8. Set skillet on wire rack; let cool about 20 minutes. 9. Loosen edges with knife, place serving plate over top of skillet, turn tart upside-down, then remove skillet. 10. Scrape out any apples that stick to skillet and put them back into place. (Tart can be kept for several hours at room temperature, but unmold it onto dish that can withstand mild heat. Before serving, warm tart for 10 minutes in 200-degree oven.)

FOR THE TOPPING: 1. With electric mixer, beat cold heavy cream and sour cream at medium-high speed until mixture thickens and holds soft but definite peaks. (Topping can be made a day ahead; cover and refrigerate.) Accompany each wedge of tart with generous dollop of topping.

Our Experience

We started with our ingredients as usual and began making the pastry dough. Since my food processor isn’t a standard sized one, we used the KitchenAid mixer instead. It does a pretty good job of cutting fat into flour using the paddle attachment. I really hate when I actually have to use a pastry blender by hand.

We followed the recipe for making the dough, just used a different tool. It’s the same as every other pastry dough (except the puff pastry) that we have made this year.

While the dough chilled, we began peeling, coring, and quartering the apples. We weighed the apples and 3 lbs. ended up being 7 apples. We tossed them in lemon juice to keep them from turning brown. Which, was a very important step because the caramel took us a bit longer than we expected.

The recipe called for adding the butter and the sugar together and it was a complete failure. The sugar browned and caramelized but the butter never incorporated with the sugar. We decided we needed to try making a caramel the way we had done the crème caramel. That had gone smoothly and we knew it worked. We also looked at some other recipes for tarte Tatin and most used sugar and water (2 T.) to make the caramel and then, once the correct color, took it off the heat and then added the butter a few pieces at a time. We tried this method 2 more times and the sugar kept crystalizing, which ruined the caramel. We assumed we had some leftover sugar from the previous attempt and it was causing the crystals to form. After our third failure, I remembered reading about adding lemon juice to prevent crystallization when we made our crème caramel so I looked it up and YES!!, I had remembered correctly. Fourth batch…with an added 1/4 tsp lemon juice, was just what we were looking for! FINALLY! (Somewhere between attempt number 1 and 2 we had rolled out the dough and put it in the freezer to chill…and forgot it after failure number 3.)

As a side note, we have decided that we want to try new meals on top of our baking experiments! So, while this tart was supposed to be done by now, it wasn’t, and it was time to start the new food of the weekend: chicken a la king. Things we make over and over again go pretty quickly because we know what we are doing. The chicken was another story. (We had forgotten to pre-cook the chicken the night before, so it made it into the oven during caramel attempt number 2.) Then there was prepping the vegetables and sauce, which took more time than we had since one of us was still trying to get a decent caramel. Finally, we needed the oven to cook some biscuits. After the chicken was done we decided that the biscuits needed the oven first so they went in and the tart, minus the pastry, waited on the stove. It was at about this time that we realized the pastry was still in the freezer and was now pretty solid. We took it out and set it close to the oven, hoping that it would thaw while the biscuits cooked. With about 2 minutes left on the biscuits, we checked the pastry and it was pliable enough to get on the apples. It cracked a few places but we were just happy to get it on and get it in the oven!

What we liked.

This dessert gets a 1-3-0 rating. As usual, I loved it! Big surprise there, I know. The 3 is for “liked” it well enough and the 0 is for the one who didn’t even try it.

I really liked the pink lady apples and that they were chunky pieces. It reminded me of baked apples which I haven’t had since I was a kid. The pink ladies were tart and sweet and still had a bit of a bite to them, not mushy at all. The crust was a little grainy but, we did use whole wheat flour and that’s one of the reasons I like it. It is nutty and adds texture! The crust to fruit ratio put all the emphasis on the fruit. It was a very simple dessert but it had good depth of flavor from the caramel.

I have seen other recipes that use other fruits and I think I would love a peach tarte Tatin!

What we would change.

Aubrey, Kip, and Garrett liked it but they didn’t love it. They all prefer apple pie to this tart. Kip and Garrett ate it with ice cream while Aubrey just had a small sample without any topping at all. They all mentioned that they like the spices in apple pie better than just the caramel. Garrett said the tart could be much better with some cinnamon added. They all also commented that they didn’t like the size of the apples. They were just too big, apparently.

Now, aside from the caramel change, I don’t think it needs changes but to satisfy the rest of the household, I would be OK with adding some of the apple pie spices. IF we were to make the apples smaller, we would have to make sure not to cook them too long. It could be done but, it wouldn’t be a tarte Tatin, would it?

What we learned.

Do I even have to say it?? Our first attempt at making caramel went so well that we were a little over-confident this time around. Don’t follow this recipe and use the lemon juice…even Martha Stewart’s recipe called for a splash of lemon juice.

Until next week, Happy Baking!