Apple Tart

Not going to lie, I’ve been making a lot of apple desserts lately, and apple desserts aren’t really my favorite. However, when Claire explains how she learned to appreciate some of these recipes from her time in Paris, I suddenly am more willing to bring an open mind to the table. And I have to say, the Apple Tart is worthy of your attention.

I couldn’t find any Pink Lady apples the week I made the Apple Tart, so I instead I used Granny Smith for a similar sweetness. As I mentioned, there’s been a lot of apple desserts for me lately since it’s a good time of the year to complete these, and I get a bit tired of constantly chopping and cooking on the stove. These are things I never did before while baking my favorite recipes; to me, baking has always been mixing doughs or whisking batters. But there’s a first for everything, right?

One reason this experience making the Apple Tart was an overall easy experience was the fact that I made the Rough Puff Pastry dough ahead of time. Unlike a lot of the other recipes I’ve made out of Dessert Person that have required a pre-made dough, I actually had extra dough left after I was done making the Apple Tart. I highly recommend making the pastry a day or two ahead of time if you can; it just relieves a lot of stress in getting all the elements to be completed at the same time when putting it together.

The compote took quite a while to cook to the right consistency. The apples cooked relatively fast and had a nice tenderness to them. Once I added the unsweetened apple cider (By the way, can we please discuss how much better unsweetened apple juice tastes over the concentrated stuff? I’m never going back!), I needed to add some patience to the recipe. It took around a half hour to really get this compote boiled down to a thick, sticky consistency; so far that is the longest this has taken with any of the fruit or caramel related recipes I’ve made. Maybe this is normal, and I’m just not used to it.

While the compote took a while, the process of preparing the Rough Puff Pastry dough for the tart was very easy. Basically, I just rolled it out to a 13”x 9” rectangle, brushed egg wash on the outer edges and marked the middle all over with a fork. However, I made a minor mistake while cutting the apples. I sliced them thinly as directed, but then I nonchalantly tossed them all into a pile—wrong move! I should have sliced them thinly and then kept all the small pieces together, never really taking anything apart. Out of all the mistakes I’ve made in the past with Dessert Person, this was not that big of a deal. I simply tried to match the pieces together with similar slice sizes and moved on with my life.

After the pastry was rolled, the compote was boiled down and the apples were sliced, I put the compote in the middle of the pastry and aligned the apple slices in a crisscross pattern.

I baked my tart for around 45 minutes; the pastry was golden brown and perfect looking, while the apples seemed relatively cooked. I probably could have let it go a little longer, but I was happy with how it appeared.

Now, one thing to think about with the Apple Tart is how you’re going to plate it. This is not just a simple layer cake you can invert or cookies you can scape on to a dish. It’s a long, fragile pastry base with millions of apple slices sitting on top. I quickly realized why the Apple Tart is still sitting on parchment paper in the Dessert Person picture. It’s risky to transfer when it’s finally complete! I used my bench scraper to make sure any drippings that may have crisped up between the baking sheet and pastry were completely disconnected. Then I pushed my bench scraper under half the tart and carefully but quickly moved it to a cooling rack. Thankfully, I was successful. The apricot jam was the finishing touch to make this apple tart look next level.

The reason I said earlier to be open minded about this Apple Tart if apples aren’t your thing is because I’m realizing the French do apple dessert much differently than Americans. Rather than incorporating baked apples into some kind of bread or cake, a baked, sugared apple on top of flaky pastry is absolutely divine. It has a minor crunch from the pastry with a sweet softness from the apple slices, and it looks beautiful. From now on, I will be a fan of desserts where the apples are on top of the breading rather than baked within the batter.

I wasn't kidding about transferring that tart on to a fancy plate. Check out Claire’s Olympic skills in her YouTube video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D3DPepWaqE