French cuisine
Tarte Tatin
An upside-down apple tart: the apples caramelise at the bottom, the pastry goes on top and becomes the base.
- Prep
- 30 min
- Cook
- 60 min
- Total
- 90 min
- Difficulty
- Medium
Ingredients
- Firm tart apples1.5 kg
- Sugar200 g
- Butter120 g
- Puff pastry350 g
- Lemon1
- Vanilla1
- Cream — to serve200 ml
- Salt1 pinch
Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.
Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.
Method
- 1
Peel the apples, halve them, core them and squeeze lemon over them.
20 min
- 2
Melt the sugar in a cast-iron pan over medium heat to an amber caramel, without stirring it with a spoon.
10 min
- 3
Take it off the heat and beat in the butter piece by piece, with the vanilla and a pinch of salt.
5 min
- 4
Pack the apple halves cut side up, tight against each other, in a circle.
10 min
- 5
Cook on the hob for twenty minutes over medium heat, until the apples sink and take up the caramel.
22 min
- 6
Cover with a round of puff pastry, tucking the edges down inside the pan, and prick it in several places.
8 min
- 7
Bake at 200 °C for forty minutes, rest it five, and invert it onto a plate in one movement.
48 min
About the dish
The apples must be firm and tart — reinette, Bramley, Granny Smith. Soft varieties collapse in the caramel within twenty minutes and give purée under a lid of pastry.
The caramel is made in the pan itself, on the hob, and the apples go into it hot. The halves stand upright and packed tight: they shrink by half as they cook.
It is turned out five minutes after leaving the oven and no later. Cooled caramel sets hard and the tart has to be prised out in pieces.
Worth knowing
- — Do not stir the caramel with a spoon — swirl the pan. Stirring crystallises the sugar into lumps.
- — The pan has to be cast iron or heavy-based, fit for both hob and oven. In a thin one the caramel scorches in patches.
- — If an apple sticks to the bottom when you turn it out, just put it back in place. Restaurants do the same.
Nutrition
Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.
- Calories
- 480 kcal
- Protein
- 4 g
- Fat
- 24 g
- Carbs
- 64 g
More from France
- Ratatouille — A Provençal vegetable stew where each vegetable is cooked separately before they meet — otherwise it turns to mush.
- French onion soup — Soup from onions, stock and cheese-topped bread. All of the flavour comes from caramelisation, which takes forty minutes rather than twenty.
- Coq au vin — Chicken braised in red wine with bacon, mushrooms and small onions. Marinating the day before does half the work.