Apple Tarte Tatin Recipe
Inspired by Maggie Beer’s Apple, Rosemary & Verjuice tart, we’ve slightly tweaked it here and there based on what we had readily available and boom, the Spices&Hay version.
In Maggie Beer’s original recipe, she uses verjuice, where we use part white wine vinegar and part lemon juice. We found that splitting between the two provided a lovely tart balance (no pun intended ha ha).
Why have you used rosemary in your apple tart?
We promise, the rosemary taste is minimal. It’s completely up to you how much rosemary you’d like to put in this dish, obviously we know the herb isn’t for everyone.
Personally, we didn’t use that much whilst cooking the apples. As a garnish we were more generous, however the flavour of rosemary was still very subtle.
How to make caramel
Making caramel may seem like a daunting task but honestly, don’t be afraid. It’s two ingredients; sugar and water, that you essentially just leave to it’s own devices. Independent? Yes, yes it is.
Just remember to make sure your caramel doesn’t burn. If you really get the itch to do something, ensure that the only thing you’re doing to that pan, is gently wiping down crystallised sugar with a pastry brush dipped in water. Take off the heat and swirl as soon as you see it become a golden colour. If you’re confident, leave it a bit longer to get a deeper flavour, just make sure you don’t take it to far.
What pastry for Tarte Tatin?
For this tart, we made our own rough puff pastry. However, we know that making your own rough puff can be quite long and will lengthen out the overall method prep time.
We can tell you though, it’s worth that satisfaction of knowing you made homemade rough puff. You know, taste the difference and all that. Or if you’re a pro at making dough, get stuck in!
Back to the matter at hand, using puff pastry is the perfect pastry to compliment the apple tarte tatin. We would recommend making our homemade rough puff for this recipe. It’s not any rough puff; layered with ground almonds that compliment the apples wonderfully, it’s something worth putting the extra effort in! And in this case, you will honestly taste the difference.
Alternatively, you can also use shortcrust but we find that the puff pastry has a lighter taste that allows the filling to sing.
Using homemade rough puff pastry
If you are using homemade rough puff pastry dough for this recipe, you’ll still need to prep the dough as what has been described in the recipe below. We need to roll the pastry to a 5mm thickness, but the only difference is, you’re using your dough that’s just finished resting in the fridge as opposed to out of the packet.
| Prep Time | 25 minutes |
| Cook Time | 30 minutes |
| Passive Time | 20 minutes |
| Servings |
slices
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- 8 pink lady apples
- 300 g rough puff pastry shop bought or homemade*
- 50 ml water
- 100 ml white wine vinegar
- 50 ml lemon juice freshly squeezed
- 10 sprigs rosemary
- 80 g butter
- 125 g caster sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 baking paper disk the same size as your pan to cover the apples whilst cooking
Ingredients
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|
- Preheat oven to 220 degrees celsius.
- Prepare the rough puff pastry disc; take out the pastry from the fridge and roll out to a 5mm thickness. Cut a 22cm disc or pan size*** that you have available. Place back into the fridge for later.
- Peel and core the apples and then cut in half lengthways.
- Place into a bowl with the white wine vinegar, toss to coat and set aside. You may feel the need to dilute the vinegar with some lemon if its too strong
- Combine sugar and water in a ovenproof pan. Ensure that it is big enough to fit all the apples. This should not be the same pan that you measured out your pastry disc for. To cook the apples we need a slightly larger pan.
- Cook until sugar is dissolved and is deep and golden in colour. Do not stir the sugar, wait until it has turned golden. Slightly loosen sugar by gently swirling pan around.
- Brush down the sides of the pan with a wet pastry brush to prevent sugar from crystallising.
- Once deep golden, remove from heat and stir in lemon juice.
- Place apple halves, peeled side down into the pan with the caramel mixture. Cover with baking paper disc and place over high heat for 5 minutes; occasionally stirring the pan to prevent apples sticking.
- Remove baking paper and turn apples over in the pan. Add in butter in small knobs, cover with baking paper and cook for further five minutes.
- Remove baking paper again and add rosemary tips. Remove from heat.
- Grab another pan (the one you used to measure your puff pastry disc) and grease with some additional butter. Arrange 14 apple halves peeled side down fanning over each other. Place remaining two apples in the centre.
- Pour any caramel leftover in the pan and place apples in the fridge to cool.
- Now remove pastry from the fridge and roll out slightly so it is 1cm larger. Use a fork to pierce a few holes in the pastry disc.
- Remove the cool apple pan mixture from fridge. Carefully place pastry on top of the apples and tuck in the pastry around the edges to encase the apples.
- Brush with egg wash and place in the preheated oven at 220 degrees (200 fan oven) for five minutes.
- Turn down the temperature on the oven to 200 degrees (180 fan ) and continue to bake until pastry is golden and cooked through for approximately 20 mins.
- Pull out the tart from the oven and place a serving plate face side down onto the pan. In one motion, flip the pan and turn tart onto the serving plate.
- Sprinkle some fresh rosemary tips on top of the apples.
- Serve with ice cream or custard OR both and DIG IN!
*We made our own homemade sweet rough puff pastry for this recipe, you are welcome to use a pre-made one, if making your own prepare beforehand (unless you can handle the multitasking)!
**Roll out the disc slightly larger than the pan, so that you can tuck the sides in; ensuring none of the sweet sticky caramel goodness gets away.
***The pan size for pastry disc is not the same pan to cook the apples in - you will need a bigger pan for this.
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