Tarte Tatin - Tuesdays with Dorie

Happy 2nd Anniversary Tuesdays with Dorie!
Apple Tarte Tatin

For this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie, we are celebrating the TWO YEAR Anniversary of the TWD baking group! All started by Laurie, this group has grown to hundreds of bakers. And I think all of us have grown as bakers and bloggers – trying new recipes, finding interesting ingredients and making baking friends.

Special thanks to author Dorie Greenspan who has fully supported us in our adventure. Dorie is quick to answer questions, and gives us helpful hints. She is fantastic, and if you don’t already have her book, you should get it!

After putting three recipes up for a vote (and heavy, but unsuccessful lobbying by Clara), we were given the choice of posting either Cocoa-Buttermilk Birthday Cake or Tarte Tatin. I’m sure there are plenty of people who are making both…but I’m a bit under the weather and only had the energy to make one.

I chose Tarte Tatin because I have a mess of apples and I love, love warm apples. I used an all-butter pie crust as Trader Joe’s isn’t carrying all-butter puff pastry anymore (sad).

I used five HUGE Fuji apples. I forget where I bought these, but they were on sale so I scooped them up! (This is a 10" cast iron pan I picked up at Target for $20).

I didn't get my caramel to a deep caramel color...even after 27 minutes (should take around 15 minutes per Dorie). I think my heat was too low during the caramelizing process and cooked the liquid out of a lot of the apples...but I am happy with the taste! Nothing like warm apples! :) I'm going to try it again sometime and turn up the heat a bit to get a deeper caramel color.

My favorite line of the recipe is for flipping out the smoking hot Tarte Tatin. Dorie says, "acting quickly and confidently...turn the tart out onto the platter and remove the pan." How great are those instructions? When I was flipping mine out...I kept saying, "With Confidence! With Confidence!" It all came out, but I had a lot of extra liquid as you can see. I want to try it again and get that nice caramel color!

Thank you Laurie for starting this fun group!

Recipe:
From Dorie Greenspan on NPR - recipe for Tarte Tatin
(You can listen to the radio piece and see photos of Dorie being "confident" turning out her Tarte Tatin!)