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Tarte Tatin

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Makes one 9-inch tart (about 8 servings) 1x

Time about 1 hour

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Ingredients

  • 6 Granny Smith or other tart, hard apples (about 2 pounds)
  • 8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, cut into pieces
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1 recipe Sweet Tart Crust, dough chilled but not rolled out

Instructions

  1. Heat the oven to 400°F. Peel, core, and quarter the apples. Press the butter into the bottom and up the sides of a heavy ovenproof 10-inch skillet (cast iron is good). Sprinkle the butter with the sugar. Press the apple quarters into the sugar, arranging them in concentric circles and making certain to pack them in tightly; they will shrink considerably during cooking.
  2. Put the pan over medium-high heat. Cook until the butter-sugar mixture has turned deep, dark brown and the apples are just tender when pierced with a knife tip, 15 to 20 minutes; rotate the pan and give it a gentle shake if the apples are cooking unevenly. Meanwhile, roll out the dough just a little bigger than the pan. When the apples are ready, remove the pan from the heat. Lay the dough on top of the apples, bringing the dough to the edges of the pan to seal it. Prick the dough with a fork. Bake until the crust is golden brown, about 20 minutes.
  3. Remove the tart from the oven and let it sit for 5 minutes. Shake the hot pan to loosen the apples stuck to the bottom of the skillet. Put a heatproof serving plate on top of the skillet and invert everything so the plate is on the bottom and the skillet is on top. (Take care not to burn yourself; the juices are hot.) Carefully lift off the skillet. If some apples stick to the bottom of the pan, patch them onto the top as best as you can. Serve right away, or at room temperature. Keep leftovers at room temperature for up to a day or 2.

– Recipe from How to Cook Everything: Completely Revised Twentieth Anniversary Edition 

Recipe variations

Caramelized Pineapple Tart
You have to use fresh pineapple for this; canned won’t do: Substitute slices of pineapple (roughly the size of apple quarters) for the apples.

Caramelized Peach or Plum Tart
Do this in the summer, when stone fruit are at their best: Substitute ripe, slightly soft pitted peaches or plums for the apples. In Step 1 let the butter and sugar cook alone in the skillet until syrupy but not too dark, about 5 minutes. Then remove from the heat and carefully add the fruit.