Basic Apple Tart
Finally, a solution for having too much fruit: eat it in pie form. My mom goes to the local farmer’s market every weekend (rain or shine), and whenever I come home to visit, she exclaims, “These [insert fruit or vegetable here] looked gorgeous, so I bought two cases! Here, take one.” - and shoves it towards me. I’m more than overjoyed at the sight of a box of beautiful, locally grown produce, but after a week of my bunny and I munching on it, the rest ends up forgotten in the produce drawer, or even worse, the garbage.
But now, lo and behold - the magic of making a fruit tart. It’s just 5 ingredients (which don’t include lard, or that strange goopy stuff found in American pies - what IS that?), involves very little work, and best of all, no more sugar rush from attempting to finish the rest of my fruit in a single day. It came out so well, I can’t wait to make a pear tart, peach tart, raspberry tart…
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Alice Waters’s Apple Tart
From The Smitten Kitchen
For dough:
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, just softened, cut in 1/2-inch pieces
3 1/2 tablespoons chilled water
For filling:
2 pounds apples (Golden Delicious or another tart, firm variety), peeled, cored (save peels and cores), and sliced
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
5 tablespoons sugar
For glaze:
1/2 cup sugar
MIX flour, sugar, and salt in a large bowl; add 2 tablespoons of the butter. Blend in a mixer until dough resembles coarse cornmeal. Add remaining butter; mix until biggest pieces look like large peas.
DRIBBLE in water, stir, then dribble in more, until dough just holds together. Toss with hands, letting it fall through fingers, until it’s ropy with some dry patches. If dry patches predominate, add another tablespoon water. Keep tossing until you can roll dough into a ball. Flatten into a 4-inch-thick disk; refrigerate. After at least 30 minutes, remove; let soften so it’s malleable but still cold. Smooth cracks at edges. On a lightly floured surface, roll into a 14-inch circle about 1/8 inch thick. Dust excess flour from both sides with a dry pastry brush.
PLACE dough in a lightly greased 9-inch round tart pan, or simply on a parchment-lined baking sheet if you wish to go free-form, or galette-style with it. Heat oven to 400°F. (If you have a pizza stone, place it in the center of the rack.)
OVERLAP apples on dough in a ring 2 inches from edge if going galette-style, or up to the sides if using the tart pan. Continue inward until you reach the center. Fold any dough hanging over pan back onto itself; crimp edges at 1-inch intervals.
BRUSH melted butter over apples and onto dough edge. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons sugar over dough edge and the other 3 tablespoons over apples. (Deb note: I found it nearly impossible to coat it with this much sugar, so I used a little less–more like 3 tablespoons. It made a lightly sweet tart, which we found perfect.)
BAKE in center of oven until apples are soft, with browned edges, and crust has caramelized to a dark golden brown (about 45 minutes), making sure to rotate tart every 15 minutes.
MAKE glaze: Put reserved peels and cores in a large saucepan, along with sugar. Pour in just enough water to cover; simmer for 25 minutes. Strain syrup through cheesecloth.
REMOVE tart from oven, and slide off parchment onto cooling rack. Let cool at least 15 minutes.
BRUSH glaze over tart, slice, and serve.
3/4 sticks of butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1/2 teaspoon of sugar for the crust. The crust itself isn’t that sweet, but the filling is. I sprinkled some extra sugar on top of the crust before baking. Mike got me this measuring expandable measuring device…cool huh? It measures both wet and dry ingredients.
Mixing up the dough by hand…still waiting for that KitchenAid mixer to magically appear…
Here’s the lump of dough before refrigeration. It’s super soft and sticky at the point, so just wrap it up in some plastic wrap and put it in the fridge. (I ended up putting mine in the freezer so I could use it sooner)
The dough cracked after I took it out of the fridge. Kneading it for just a little bit to bring up the temperature made it much easier to work with.
I’ve been eyeing this $18 tart pan from Williams-Sonoma for a while, but ended up getting this one for $4 from Daiso. The metal obviously wasn’t as good but it seemed to work just the same.
I rolled out the dough rather thinly, so I could have some of the crust fold over the top, galette style.
I transferred over the dough from the board to the tin by folding it into a triangle. This makes it easier to carry, and reduces any risk of the dough tearing. Another way I’ve seen to transfer pie dough is to roll it around the rolling pin, and unrolling it on top of the pan.
After pressing the dough to the sides of the pan, I was still able to get some of the dough to overhang the pan like I wanted to.
Time to cut up apples! I used ended up using three.
Peeling the apples…
…and coring the insides out.
Cored apples
The apples sliced, fanned out, and placed in the tart pan. Not at all perfect but you can always say you were going for the “rustic” look with this one.
Making the syrup while waiting for the pie to bake. I was supposed to boil the stems and peel in sugar and water, but I accidentally threw them away. I boiled a few extra pieces of apple instead - but ended up not using the syrup at all. The apples I used were sweet Fuji apples, instead of tart apples (like Granny Smith), so skipping the extra sugar made sense.
I stood in my kitchen, in shock and awe, at how picture-perfect this came out.
It’s still not as good as this one, though (oh sorry, that was my inner nerd talking).
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It looks really good! (And I thought, reading just the title, that Apple Inc. came up with some new stuff :D)
@HKT
If Apple, Inc. made apple pie, it would look nicer and cost five times more.
true. and the tart mold is probably transparent plastic, and the pie would come in a white box or something.
btw, i am sure i have seen that measuring plunger thingy in a couple of alton brown’s show. where did mike get it?
@HKT
Ahaha exactly1 And Mike said he got that from Sur La Table. I can’t find it on the website, though…
I’m looking forward to all those other kinds of tarts! If they’re as delicious as this one was, I’d better go buy some bigger pants to accommodate my huge belly.
Mmmmm, that looks so tasty!
That is so clever! not to mention scrumptious…i cant wait to bake some….MOM i want some apple tart thingies…by the way you are one bad ass photographer!
link for amazing measuring tools:
http://www.surlatable.com/product/kitchen+%26+bar+tools/measuring+tools/measuring+cups+%26+spoons/kitchen+art+adjustable+measuring+spoons+%26+cups%2C+measuring+cup.do