Tarte Tartin

With lots of apples to use up and miserable weather here at last, we fancied something in the apple pie range and this is a lighter, very appley version. The traditional method for the French Classic needs a dish you can use on the hob and then put into the oven. This version just requires an ordinary cake tin. It is one I collected in the years of regular abundant apple harvests when a different way of presenting an apple pudding was always needed. So I tried it this weekend for a change and discovered again that it is easy and delicious, if not, perhaps, quite authentic. 

Tarte Tatin

4oz sweet shortcrust
5 large cooking apples
1oz butter melted
4 oz brown sugar

8in shallow tin with a fixed base

No 5/190

  1. Make the pastry - I would always make 8 oz and freeze half for another day. Use plain flour and half butter, plus for each 8 oz flour quantity, a dessertspoonful of sugar, mixed with one egg and a dessertspoonful of milk.
  2. Peel and thinly slice the apples.
  3. Put melted butter on base of tin. I line mine with a circle of greaseproof paper first as it is an old one!
  4. Sprinkle some of the sugar on and then layer the apples up with the rest of the sugar.
  5. Roll the pastry out to the size of the top. Lay on, gently tuck any edges in but don't push it down. Prick it all over with a fork. 
  6. Bake 45 - 60 mins until the top is crisply brown and there is bubbling juice around the edges. If the pastry looks too brown after 30 mins or so, cover with grease proof.
  7. Let it cool in the tin a few minutes at least and carefully turn out onto a flat plate.
  8. Eat hot, warm, or cold. Ice cream to go with it? - well you could!


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