Come for the recipe; stay for the story!
Video Tutorial: Here
10-12" disc of quick puff (<-You can make half of this puff pastry recipe for a 10" pan) (You want your puff to be about 1/2" BIGGER than your pan. My pan is 10.25" I cut my puff to 11", your puff pastry will be about 1/8" when rolled out.)
2 oz butter (1/2 stick)
8 oz sugar (about 1 1/4 cups)
8-10 gala apples-peeled, cored, and quartered lengthwise
Note: You will need a skillet that is both oven safe and stovetop safe. I used my 10.25" Le Creuset skillet that I found for a steal at an estate sale!
1. Melt the butter in the skillet
2. Add the sugar and cook until dissolved.
3. Continue cooking the sugar until it is a medium-dark colored caramel and then remove from the heat
4. Arrange the apples in the pan standing up with the core sides all facing in the same direction. Add as many apples as you can
5. Put the pan back on the stove and cook at a low simmer until they are translucent and amber in color. (The very top may still not be translucent and amber, that is okay because we are going to bake it in the oven too!) They will shrink as they cook, and as they shrink you can gently push them back to fan them out. When a knife, poked about 2/3 of the way up the apple, goes in easily they are done cooking!
6. Remove cooked apples from the heat, and let cool in the pan for about 15 minutes
7. After apples are cooled, put your COLD puff pastry disc on top of the apples. (Note: puff pastry should be "docked" before putting on top of the apples by taking a fork and gently poking holes all over the puff)
8. Bake at 400-425 for about 20-25 minutes until golden brown and then lower the temperature to 350 and bake for another 20-30 minutes until the puff is dry
9. Once it has been removed from the oven, let it set for about 5-10 minutes to cool and firm up a bit. Then put a plate or cutting board on top of the pan and flip. Let the pan set upside down for a minute or two to allow the apples to fully release. Any apples that didn't release can be placed back in their spot.
My puff shrank back a bit more than yours should. I did not follow my own directions when making it. Here is a good reason to follow the directions better than I did! Notice I still had flaky layers, but it shrank ALOT, and had holes in it.
Tarte Tatin. Such a classic French dessert. I'll be honest, when I first tried this one in pastry school, I didn't like it. But as I've been dealing with pastry more, it has grown own me. It is like an apple pie with more filling than pastry. And the pastry it does have is SO GOOD. Who would say no to baked apples with a flaky, buttery, pastry layer? This is the first dessert in the "tart week," and it's a simpler one to start off with.
Another honest moment, I cooked my sugar more so that the caramel is a little darker, the very French way, American's may not like it as much. Because it is cooked darker the caramel is a little more bitter. I can drink black coffee and when I have a rare glass of wine I do prefer red to white, so bitter and I get along. My husband tried this dessert and after one bite, looked at me funny and asked "What are the apples cooked in?" He doesn't like anything even slightly bitter. His sweet tooth is so sweet that it gives me a tooth ache without thinking about it. Needless to say he passed on the tarte, but that meant there was more for me!
If your taste buds align more with my husbands, there is hope! You can cook your caramel less, and have a similar end product that you may enjoy more. There are other things you can do to customize this recipe a bit. You can use other fruits (just keep in mind that if your fruit is juicier than apples or pears you may have to adjust the amount of sugar and or butter in the recipe to prevent the dreaded "soggy bottom" on your tart. It will also change the name. Traditionally, "tarte tatin" is always made with apples. So if you made it with pears it would be a Pear Tarte Tatin. You can also add spices to it if you would like. Vanilla bean or cinnamon are things that you could easily add to it to change the flavor slightly without having to adjust anything else in the recipe.
Enough of the technicals, the nerdy history part of me is screaming because this dessert has a really good story with it. Like always, there are several versions of the story but the consistencies are that it was created by one of the Tatin sisters in a French hotel they ran, and it most likely wasn't intentional.
The story I was told in pastry school was that there was a rush in the kitchen one day, and Stephanie Tatin dropped her famous apple pie! (Hopefully not on the floor) Rather than count it as a loss, she scooped it up and service it upside down instead. It was a hit! So the tarte tatin was born. The other version of the story is that she left her apples cooking in the butter and sugar for too long and they began to burn so she quickly threw the pastry over top to steam them to stop the caramel from cooking. She served it and as they say, the rest is history!
Regardless of how the tarte tatin came to be, it is agreed that it's delicious. The only way to serve it is hot, so don't make it to eat later after dinner, make it to eat now! Also, It is so loved that it has a website dedicated to it. "The friends of Tarte Tatin." I've included it amongst the other sources if you are interested. You can read it while you wait for your tarte tatin to come out of the oven! Bon Appetit!
Sources:
http://www.tartetatin.org/home/history-of-the-tarte-tatin (friends of tarte tatin)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarte_Tatin
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