The classic caramel apple tart of Paris is now something that is served
worldwide. The Tatin sisters and their little bakery put tarte tatin on the map.
Probably one of my favorite desserts, I think this is one of those kind of easy
showstopper desserts and i want to underscore it easy.
Because it's so, so simple.
The first thing you want to do is throw your
butter into your pan.
All we want to do is let this butter and sugar melt in our
pan. Here I have a whole bunch of apples
that I have peeled and taken the core
out of and we're essentially gonna line the apples up. When you load it with
apples, and the apples release their juices, and the juices
and the fat and the brown sugar
all boil together they essentially emulsify.
And create this beautiful caramel that soaks up into those apples.
Now remember, once it reaches this stage
it's gonna really start browning fast so you don't want to
get it too dark before you start loading in your apples.
As this boils these are going to get soft and shrink so what I like to do is just
assume that I can fit a bunch of other pieces in, and I want the juices to begin
to cascade down into the pan to sort of stop the caramel from getting too dark.
This is going to help recirculate some of that apple juice steam and lower it
down in there and kind of force the apples to purge their liquid. These are
now warm, can I get another one in the center? Yep.
See all that juice and caramel there, that's just gonna keep coming out of
these apples as they cook. Go to put the lid on for a couple more minutes just to
draw a few more juices out of them.
Our apples have started to get soft and hot.
This has been simmering away nice and slow for about 10 minutes and you can
see here when I tilt it towards the edge that we've got that sputtering caramel.
So it's almost there and I can shake the handle and turn my apples so I know
we're not sticking. And now is probably the time that we want to sprinkle it
with our seasoning mixture.
A little bit of clove, and allspice, and nutmeg and
cinnamon, and ginger.
Stir that together.
And then you've basically made your own pie spice.
So now, all we do, is take this off of the heat, let all that caramel
cool down a little bit, let the residual heat cook the rest of the apples.
The tell-tale sign that you've taken it off the stove at the right time is no liquid
comes out, because all of that beautiful caramel has solidified. I'm ready
now to put my two leaves
of puff pastry in here.
Let's do halves.
There's a half, there's a half, there's a half...
and there's a half.
And what we want to do is stuff those edges as far
down inside this tart as we can. It's gonna hold our apples together and I always
- just want to put four little holes there. That way it won't build up any steam
balloons or something.
And we just slide this in to our 400° oven.
I'm going to work very quickly to flip it.
What you want to do is come in very close, as
tight as you can to the edge of the pan, because then you'll have more control
over the area that the tart has cooked in.
And 1, 2, 3
...there's your tarte tatin.
I just want to smooth those out with the butter, so I get a nice tight spiral.
I'm just adding gentle pressure, but you see how I can draw those tips in and
just get a slightly tighter presentation.
As those apples have cooked and you can
see they've just absorbed all of that beautiful brown caramel.
This has rested for a little while, it's still warm on the very bottom. First cut, don't cut a
triangle out of it. Just go straight across and then most importantly using a
spatula get underneath the whole thing and then because it's very, very sweet,
that dollop of crème fraîche.
All your loved ones will be very happy, you'll be
very excited to serve this stunning,
caramelized apple dessert. If there's a
better autumnal dessert I don't know what it is.