Tarte Tatin
Upside-Down Caramelised Apple Tart
Apples, butter and sugar, cooked until the fruit is soft and deep amber and the juices have turned to caramel, then baked under a lid of pastry and turned out. Nothing else goes in: no cinnamon, no vanilla. The brotherhood that guards the recipe in the town where it began is clear about that.
The tart comes from the Hôtel Tatin at Lamotte-Beuvron in the Sologne, kept by two sisters at the end of the nineteenth century. The familiar story has one of them putting apples in the oven without pastry by mistake. Historians quoted by Slate think the upside-down method may have been deliberate or already local. The tart became nationally known after the food writer Curnonsky wrote about it in 1926.
The recipe endorsed by the Confrérie des Lichonneux de Tarte Tatin uses 1.6 kg of apples, 120 g of butter and 80 g of sugar in a 24 cm high-sided pan, with a shortcrust made from 200 g of flour and 100 g of butter.
Ingredients
For the pastry
- 200 g plain flour
- 100 g cold unsalted butter, diced
- A pinch of fine sea salt
- 3 to 4 tbsp cold water
For the apples
- 120 g unsalted butter
- 80 g caster sugar
- 1.6 kg firm eating apples (Cox, Braeburn or Reine des Reinettes)
Method
- Make the pastry Rub the butter into the flour and salt, add just enough cold water to bind, shape into a disc, wrap and chill for 30 minutes.
- Pack the pan Heat the oven to 200°C (180°C fan). Slice the 120 g of butter over the base of the pan and sprinkle the sugar evenly on top. Peel, quarter and core the apples. Pack the quarters into the pan standing on their sides, rounded side down, as tightly as you can in concentric circles; they shrink as they cook. Fit any remaining pieces on top.
- First bake Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until the apples have softened and released their juice.
- Caramelise on the hob Move the pan to the hob over a medium heat, using a thick oven glove on the handle. Cook for 25 to 35 minutes, turning the pan now and then for even heat, until the juices bubbling up between the apples have thickened to a deep amber caramel. Watch the colour: it should be the brown of a conker, not black.
- Cover and bake again Roll the pastry to a circle a little wider than the pan and about 3 mm thick. Lay it over the apples, tuck the edge down inside the pan and prick it. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until the pastry is golden and crisp.
- Turn out Rest for 10 minutes. Cover with a deep plate, hold both firmly with oven gloves and turn over in one movement. Lift off the pan and replace any apples that have stuck. Serve warm, with crème fraîche.
Food safety
Hot caramel causes deep burns. The pan handle will be extremely hot throughout; use dry, thick oven gloves, keep children away and turn the tart out over a worktop, never over your body.
Pack in more apples than seems possible. A loosely filled pan gives a thin, sad tart.