Apple Tart : Tarte aux Pommes : Lesson 10 : Part 2 : LCB at Home

The French like to do this fancy, curvy, apple-slice decoration on top of their apple pies.



It looks lovely. Nitty to put on, but lovely. And it has a classic apricot glaze to finish it off.

Tasty as can be. The dough/shell is delicious tasting but... it was a little on the tough side. Hard to penetrate with a fork; and the edge was quite browned (but not burnt). The toughness is almost certainly from overworking the dough during its preparation; they warn you about this problem. I used a machine to make the dough and evidently went a trifle too far when blending it. This is a "brisse" crust so it's a crumbly mess when it's still dough, waiting to be formed. In the machine this time it suddenly decided to form itself into a ball and that was evidently too too much for the poor pastry. It was not. by any means, horrible - - but must be better next time.

What we did was...

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Tarte aux Pommes : Apple Tart

Serves: 8

Ingredients

• 1 pâté brisée sucrée (sweet crusty pastry)
  • 1 1/2 C flour (minus 1 T)
  • 3 T sugar
  • 7 T butter
  • salt, pinch
  • 1 egg
  • 1 t vanilla
  • 1 T water (maybe)
• Apple filling
  • 3 apples, Golden Delicious (get 6, just to be sure) - peeled, cored, chopped
  • 3 T butter
  • 3 T sugar
  • 1 T vanilla extract, pure, natural
• 2 apples, Golden Delicious (yes, more apples, for the spirals) (maybe 3 apples, have an extra one ready)
  
• Glaze
  • 1/2 C Apricot jam
  • 1 T water
  • 1 T kirsch

Procedure

1. Make the tart shell
• See the procedure for the recipe of the Onion Tart: Tarte à l'Oignon : Lesson 6 but use the ingredient list above (more sugar and some vanilla flavour)
• "Blind" bake the shell and cool it (see that other post about that too)
2. Apple filling
1. Sauté, without any crusty browning, the chopped apples in the butter until very very soft (covered occasionaly )
2. add the sugar and vanilla
3. continue cooking until rather dry and sticking together - not runny - and set aside
3. Peel, core, halve and slice very thin the
4. Put filling in (cool) shell, decorate with 1/2 slices in spirals
5. Bake at 175 C [350 F] for 30 minutes (until apple slices are softer and their edges are toasting)
6. Melt apricot jam in a tiny saucepan, whisk in water and kirsch
• cook until syrupy
7. Paint glaze onto the pie

Done

Notes

1. Take great care not to overwork the pastry. It ought to be crumbly, not formed into a ball.
2. If the edge of the pastry crust threatens to become too dark cover the edge with strips of alu foil.

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