A masterpiece that was made … by mistake!
ingredients for 8 servings (total cost about 8€ with organic ingredients)
a portion of basic brisèe dough for tarts made with
- 125 g di farina 00
- 62 g butter
- 31 g water (or milk)
- 12 g sugar
- 2 g di sale
for the caramelized apples
- 1,5 kg apples
- 100 g di burro
- 150 g di zucchero
- un pizzico di sale
- a few slivered almonds for decoration
In the pastry making history there are endless examples of iconic pastries that were invented accidentally, before becoming legendary or signature dishes. One of them is the upside down apple tart, widely known as Le Tarte des demoiselles Tatin, or simply Tarte Tatin.
Tarte tatin, is a tart in which the apples (or other fruit in declining variants) are caramelized in butter and sugar, and then covered by a raw disc of dough, before being put in the oven to bake. Once ready, it is turned upside down, hence its alternative name, upside down tart.
For a proper tarte tatin, one has to cook the apples in a butter and sugar syrup, where the apples will release their pectin, which combines with the other ingredients, forming a baked apple compote and acquiring its characteristic taste. It is therefore, considered that the best apples to use are the Golden apples, which have the most pectin of all varieties.
Nevertheless, in this case, I used my beloved firikia baby apples, as I like the fact that they are very small, therefore I can use them in halves giving a beautiful appearance to the tart.
As far as the base is conserned, traditionally the tart is made with a laminated dough, but it can also be made with a brisee dough. Some use even a sweet shortcrust pastry dough, but in my opinion, this should be avoided, because the tart becomes too sweet.
I prefer using the brisee dough, as I did in this case.
So, to make it first of all we have to prepare a portion of a basic shortcrust dough. Look qui how. Once we make the dough, we let it rest in the fridge for several hours, ideally overnight.
When we are ready to prepare the tart, we remove the dough from the fridge and we roll it out to a disc of a diameter a little wider than the baking pan we intend to use and a thickness of a little less than 1 cm. We place it between two baking papers and we return it to the fridge to keep it well chilled.
Meanwhile, we prepare the caramelized apples. To make the butter caramel, it is best (more convenient) to use directly the baking pan in which we are going to bake the tart, if, of course, it can be placed over the stove. Otherwise, we have to use a saucepan and then to transfer the caramel and apples in the baking pan, something rather troublesome, therefore not advisable.
So, we melt the butter in the pan, we add the sugar in a slow stream on top of it and we cook mixing gently, until it turns to a light golden brown color and it acquires a light odor of beurre noisette. Be careful, though, not to cook the caramel too much, or it will become bitter and unpleasant.
When the butter caramel syrup is ready, we remove the pan from the stove and we start peeling the apples. We do not do this in advance, to avoid the oxidation and browning of the apples. We could rub them with lemon to prevent this, but I prefer to avoid it, because it has the con that it will harden the apples, preventing their softening.
So, we peel the apples, we cut them vertically in halves, we core them and we arrange them in a spiral pattern, well stuffed and curved side down over the butter caramel syrup. If you use bigger apples, you might need to cut the in quarters.
Then we return the pan to the stove and we cook the apples covered with a lid for about 15-20 minutes over medium – low heat, to help them soften a little bit and to start releasing their pectin. Then we uncover them, we raise the heat to high and we continue cooking for another 5-10 minutes, so that the some of the apple juices are reduced, the syrup begins to thicken and to turn into caramel and the apples are well impregnated with it. We remove again the pan from the burner.
We take the chilled tart disc from the fridge and we arrange it over the apples, stuffing the borders between them and the inner edge of the baking pan. We make a whole in the center of the dough to help the steam escape during baking.
We bake the tart at the lower part of a preheated ventilated oven at 160 o C for about 25- 30 minutes or until the tart surface becomes golden and the caramel begins to rise on the sides. Do not over cook, because we want to keep the base soft and not to turn it into biscuit.
We turn off the oven and we let the tart inside it for a few minutes, then we remove it from the oven and we turn it over a large serving dish with borders, so that they can hold the caramel. We let the pan for a few seconds over the tart, until all the caramel drips off, then we remove the pan. We top the tart with a few slivered blanched almonds.
We can serve the tart lukewarm or cold.
