Tuesdays With Dorie: French Apple Tart

Well, where were we? It was the 2nd week in January, and I had just returned from the Ragnar Relay in the Keys….oh yes. And then I went and ran the Disney marathon. Here’s me and David after the race. We both ran it…but not together. He’s much faster than I am.

after the race we detoured on the way home to get me one of these:

That is a blurry photo of an amazing strawberry milkshake from the Parksdale Farmers Market in Plant City, FL. Did I mention they make a spectacular strawberry milkshake? They’re famous for them. If you ever find yourself in the neighborhood, you should pull off the highway and get one. Especially if you just ran a marathon!

I baked these tarts on Friday, before the marathon, because I figured it would make a good dessert after a good pasta (gotta get those carbs) dinner. And I was right. It was delicious. And not too terribly difficult, either….a winning combination, in my book.

The dough was the same one we used for the blueberry-nectarine pie over the summer. This time, I paid closer attention when I was splitting the recipe. I think it paid off in the end. The dough was flaky and tender and buttery. I used Kerrygold Irish Butter, which no doubt added extra flavor to the dough. I bought the fancy butter because I thought we’d be making croissants over the holidays, but we didn’t…so I took this occassion to use it. I usually use plain old Publix butter, because it is less expensive. But it is clearly lacking in the flavor department. This is definitely the place to go for the good stuff. It just tasted more ‘buttery.’ I’m serious.

I may not have cut the butter into the flour well enough…some of my tarts had small holes in them, which I can only assume came from the butter melting. It didn’t matter. They were delicious.

The apple filling could not have been more simple. I chunked up the apples, tossed them with sugar, lemon juice, spices and some fresh bread crumbs (I used challah that was in the freezer) and popped it in the oven. It took longer to cook than the recipe said, but otherwise was delicious. I ate some of it right after I mashed it up, and then as leftovers on saturday afternoon.

The crusts were pre-baked, and mine shrank. Which was dissapointing, but not the end of the world. Perhaps my beans didn’t get all the way into the corners? Next time I’ll try aluminum foil and do a better job at mushing them into the corners of the crust/pan.

And then filled with the apple ‘compote’ and covered with thinly sliced apples and baked again. Mine didn’t get terribly brown…I think they needed more time in the oven? Whatever….they were delicious! I’ll definitely be making this again.

The apples were light and tart against the buttery-flaky-ness of the crust. So good! I can’t wait to find an excuse to make this again. You should find an excuse to make it too. The recipe can be found on page 379 of the book, and you can find the recipe at Gaye’s blog, Laws of the Kitchen. As always, you can find other tasty examples of this recipe at the Tuesday’s With Dorie blog.