February 19th,2012

Ute bakes:TARTE TATIN

Tarte Tatin

I always thought making Tarte Tatin, the famous French tarte invented by the Tatin sisters in the late 19th century,would be very difficult. It is however surprisingly easy and I succeeded in my first attempt making this beautiful caramelly dessert bliss. I don’t think there is any other dessert with minimal preparation effort that will result in so much happiness of your dinner guests.

I got a lot of guidance from Felicity Cloake’s how to cook perfect tarte tatin and added my own touch.

TARTE TATIN

Serves: 6 as a dessert

Preparation time: 50 minutes (including 30 minutes baking)

Ingredients:

6 small crisp apples such as Cox
150g white sugar
50g butter
a pinch of salt
175g ready-made puff pastry
(vanilla ice cream to serve it with)

1. Peel the apples,then cut in half and remove the core

2. Put the 150 mg of sugar and 50 ml of water into a 20 cm heavy-based ovenproof frying pan. Bring to boil over medium heat and wait until it turns into a light brown caramel smelling delicious.

Sugar water

Caramelly sugar water

Golden caramel

3. Take the caramel off the heat,stir in the butter and a pinch of salt,add the apples,round side up and return to heat. Cook apples for about 3-4 minutes,then carefully turn the apples around with the round side down before cooking them for another 3-4 minutes. (Be careful as the caramel gets very hot indeed –licking the spoon you have used to stir the caramel would be a bad mistake at this stage).

Cook apples on one side

and then on the other

Felicity Cloake suggests at this point to let the apples cool completely before putting the pastry on top as this will keep the pastry crisp. I didn’t do this as too impatient,and the pastry turned out a bit soggy in areas,but still very delicious.

5. Pre-heat the oven to 200C. Roll out the puff pastry on a clean surface dusted with flour to 5mm thick,and cut out a circle about 5 cm larger than your pan.

6. Put the pastry on top of the pan and tuck in the edges around the fruit avoiding the hot caramel. Bake for about 30 minutes until the pastry is golden,then remove from the oven.

just needs to be turned around now

7. Allow to cool for 5 minutes,then place on a serving plate or dish a bit larger than the pan,on top and then,very carefully,using oven gloves,invert the tart on to the plate. Best served warm,with a good quality vanilla ice cream.