Cake Batter & Crumbs

French Apple Tart

A while ago I splurged on some baking pans from France and I've been dying to use them ever since. I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to use them, but I'm very pleased in the result with their inaugural use. I love the look of the French apple tarts that you can see displayed so beautifully inside the patisserie shop cases. I wanted to give it a try for myself.

These open-faced tarts are really quite simple to prepare. I adapted mine from Le Cordon Bleu Dessert Techniques book. First the dough is prepared. I used a recipe for pâte sucrée, which is a sweet, short pastry dough. It reminds me a lot of short bread cookies. Peel, core, and thinly slice some cooking apples and arrange nicely in the tart pan. I love, love, love my apple peeler/corer. It makes this job oh so easy, and it's actually kind of fun to use! The apples are brushed with melted butter, then sprinkled with sugar and baked. After the tart is baked, I heated some apricot preserves and lightly brushed it on the tops of the apples.

The toughest task was arranging the apple slices. No matter how I tried, mine just didn't look as good as in the picture. What I discovered though is that as the apples bake, they magically soften up, shrink a bit, and meld together nicely. So, the final product turned out a lot better than the raw version. The tart was excellent; definitely different than an apple pie and really delicious with vanilla ice cream.

French Apple Tart

Pâte Sucrée

1 2/3 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup sugar
2 egg yolks
1/4 tsp vanilla

Sift the flour into a bowl and rub in the butter. Stir in the sugar. Use a fork to lightly whisk the egg yolks with the vanilla then add them to the dry ingredients and mix to forma short dough. Press together lightly and chill for 30 minutes. (The dough will be more crumbly than regular pie dough)

Apple Tart

4 cooking apples, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced (I used Granny Smith)
juice from 1 lemon
1/3 cup melted butter
1/2 cup sugar

Toss the apples with the lemon juice to prevent discoloration. Press the tart dough into the tart pan making sure to get the dough along all of the sides. Arrange the apples in the pan, overlapping them slightly. Brush with the melted butter and sprinkle with the sugar. Bake at 375 for around 45 minutes. (Keep an eye on the edges of the crust. I had to use a crust shield toward the end of the baking time.)

I also brushed mine with some cooked apricot preserves. It gave it a nice glossy finish with even extra flavor.

Baked Apple Crisp

I absolutely love apple crisp, or wait, is it apple cobbler, or even apple crumble? I always get these names mixed up when I'm trying to describe that cinnamon apple-y, dessert with the crunchy crumb topping that I love so much. Well, I finally put that question into Google and got my answer.

According to the OChef website:

Crisps are a deep-dish fruit dessert made with a crumb or streusel topping and baked

Crumbles are a British dessert in which raw fruit is topped with a crumbly pastry mixture and baked. One reference says a crumble is like a crisp, but not as rich.

and

Cobblers are a spoon pie (more like a fruit stew with dumplings), in which biscuit dough is dropped onto the fruit before baking. The consensus is that the dish got its name because the lumps of cooked dough resembled cobblestones.

The site also lists some other fruit desserts and their meanings.

I adapted part of a Martha Stewart recipe along with my mom's recipe for apple pie to come up with my version of an Apple Crisp. By the way, Martha agrees that it is indeed a crisp! I topped mine with whipped cream. Yum!


For the Filling:

6 cups peeled, sliced applies - I used 3 Granny Smith and 3 Fuji
1 tbl fresh lemon juice
1 cup sugar
2 tbl flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tbl butter

Grease two pie dishes and preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine all the ingredients except for the butter and divide into pie dishes. Dab each with bits of the butter.

For the Crisp Topping (Adapted from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook)

2 Sticks (1 cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup packed light-brown sugar
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup old-fashioned oats

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, both sugars, cinnamon, and salt. Using a pastry blender, cut in butter until large clumps form. Using a rubber spatula, mix in oats.

Evenly distribute topping on both apple dishes, cover loosely with tin foil and bake 30 minutes at 375 degrees and then another 20 minutes uncovered. Keep watching during the last baking to make sure it doesn't burn. I placed a baking pan under each dish to catch any juice that bubbles over.