Friday, February 19, 2010

Tart Tartin - Upside down Apple Pie

I did not blog here for a long time. Sorry. We moved apartments and somehow I lost my cooking mojo. My new kitchen is too modern that I found it difficult to cook. Not enough homey for cooking. When I am cooking in my new kitchen I have a feeling that I am in a star-ship cooking a meal for Captain Piccard. It is difficult to feel like Julia Child inside The Enterprise ( for those of you who don't know, that's the spaceship from Star Trek). Anyways, I like my kitchen a lot but I really hate messing it up. It's difficult to cook when you are afraid to mess up your kitchen. Oh well...If the last few weeks is any indication, it seems that I have regained my cooking mojo. I guess I have finally managed to perfect the cooking-cleaning dance. Anyways...


I love caramel. Caramel is my poison. Tarte tatin is the first type of apple pie that I learned to make. It is easy, fast and best of all full of that caramel goodness that I love. Also it reminiscent of that famous Filipino street food, the one and only banana-q. It is like a classy banana-q. Sometimes I use bananas instead of apples when I am homesick.

Enough babble. Here is the recipe:

8 medium gala apples, peeled, cored, and quartered
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1 pack frozen puff pastry (blätterteig)

1. Caramelize sugar, butter and apples in a pan over medium heat.
2. Place caramelized apples in an 8 inch round pan carefully filling all the space with the mixture.
3. Cover with pastry sheet and cut to fit pan. Pinching the pastry onto the sides of the pan.
4. Poke a hole into the pastry.
8. Bake for 30 minutes at 200 C or until pastry is brown.
9. Cool a little bit , then carefully invert to a platter. Serve with ice cream.

Caramelize apples in pan

Cover with pastry sheet and cut to fit pan