Valentine’s Day Tarte Tatin Treat

Chocolate is wonderful in deserts however it’s over done on Valentine’s Day. I ask you to stray from the crowd and make this instead; where nothing is going to impress your valentine more than a pudding made from your own puff pastry. Crisp, delicate, golden pastry is a perfect alternative to the expected chocolate desert.

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  What you will need:

  
  

  • 3 medium apples (pick some different varieties I went with a sweet pink lady and a couple of granny smiths.
  • ½ the portion of The Hangry Cook’s homemade pastry, see recipe. (When making The Hangry Cook’s homemade pastry make the full batch and freeze the unused half for another day). 
  • 100 g golden caster sugar
  • a good splash of rum / calvados (apple liquor) /amaretto or whatever you fancy
  • 1 tsp of vanilla extract (not essence) / 1 vanilla pod with the seeds removed
  • 50 g of butter
  • plain flour for dusting
  • 1 lemon

  How to make it:

  
  

  1. Start off by pre heating your oven to 190 oC. Rolling out your pastry 1 cm thick into a disk shape a couple of cm bigger than the frying pan you want to cook your Tarte Tatin in –use the flour to prevent the pastry sticking-. Once rolled out cover it and pop the pastry back in the fridge to prevent the butter from prematurely melting.
  2. Chop up the apples into quarters removing the core, keeping the skins on; the skins give the apples structure when cooked. – I used use some lemon juice to prevent the apples browning while chopping up the other apples, it also adds a bit of flavour.-
  3. Heat up your pan and pour in the sugar, making sure to keep the sugar level even, which in turn yields even heating i.e. you’re preventing the sugar burning. Quickly add a splash of spirit (in my case the rum) and let the sugar form a caramel. -If not all the sugar is dissolving swirl the pan, do not stir it! Stirring will cause the sugar to crystallise, and you will need to start again.- Boil the caramel until it’s a dark brown buttery colour.
  4. To the caramel add the apples and cook them for 5 mins until soft, they should be able to take a knife fairly easily. The apples should not be cooked to a mush/pulp!
  5. Quickly add the pastry on top of the apples in the pan and tuck in the pastry around the apples at the edge of the pan, being careful not to get the caramel on your skin the temperature is anywhere up to 190 oC! In the middle of the pastry cut a small hole using a knife to allow steam to escape.
  6. Place the whole pan into the oven for 30 minutes or until the pastry is golden in colour and cooked all the way through.
  7. Once cooked take it out of the oven, don’t let it cool, you need to flip the pie. Put a large plate on top of the pastry and flip the plate and pan at the same time. Tarte Tatin done.

  
  

  -serve with ice-cream, I practically like a real strawberry ice-cream with it. Happy Valentine’s Day!-