Everyone has their own recipe for Tarte Tatin – this one is ours.
For the longest time, I avoided making this dish because I didn’t have a cast iron Tarte Tatin dish which could go straight from the hob into the oven. It wasn’t until I read Patricia Wells’ Bistro Cooking that I realised I was being daft. We now do as she suggests and cook the apples (her recipe is for pears) in a large non-stick frypan until golden, and then tip them into a pyrex pie plate, which lets us check on the apples as they bake.
It’s worth mentioning that the first stage of this recipe, which involves caramelising the apples, requires a measure of patience. I have none, and I’m a bit of a nervous Nelly about things burning, so I never manage to get the fruit really golden and brown before baking. Pete, on the other hand, is both brave and patient, so he always handles this part of the process.
A traditional Tarte Tatin uses a Pâte Brisée or flaky pastry, but we like it best with June’s sweet shortcrust pastry. Partly because there’s always some in the freezer!
Tarte Tatin
(an original Fig Jam and Lime Cordial recipe)
- 1 kg (peeled and cored weight) of large apple chunks
- 100g caster sugar
- 100g unsalted butter
- ¼ batch of June’s Sweet Pastry Dough
1. Preheat oven to 220C (425F) of 200C (400F) with fan.
2. In a large and heavy, preferably non-stick pan, heat the butter over medium heat until melted. Stir in the sugar. Now add the apple chunks, and stir occasionally to stop them from sticking. Continue to cook, stirring gently and moving the pieces around often to ensure they don’t burn. The fruit will get very brown and quite soft – this can take half an hour or more.
3. Tip the well caramelised apple pieces and any remaining syrup into a pyrex pie dish or other suitable container. The pyrex doesn’t need to be greased first, although I’m not sure about other dishes.
4. Between two sheets of parchment, roll out the pastry dough until it is slightly larger than the top of the pie dish. Peel off the top sheet, and invert the dough onto the top of the apples, then remove the bottom parchment. Now carefully tuck the edges of the pastry in around the apples.
5. Bake the tart until the apples are bubbling and the pastry is a dark golden brown, between 30 – 40 minutes. The actual baking time takes a bit of judgment – I was sure the tart was burnt, but Pete was insistent that it was ok – and it was!
6. When the tart is ready, remove it from the oven and immediately (and carefully) invert it onto a heatproof serving plate. Any stuck apple pieces should fall slowly onto the tart – a gentle tap on the outside of the dish can help.
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
Aren’t you both culinary stars :D I can’t remember the last time I made this, but I think it involved a sugar burn, so maybe that’s why I have avoided it for a long time, but oh my, it does look luscious. What do you serve it with? clotted cream?
See, I’m useless with hot sugar, I always burn myself too! It was lovely and dark and caramelly though, so I’m grateful for Pete’s help or we would never eat it! We served it with vanilla icecream! :)
I confess I have avoided it for all the same reasons as you; burning and cast iron pan …
Cin, isn’t it funny how sometimes a recipe is so set in stone in terms of method, and then something comes along and turns it completely on its head and you suddenly think…”hey, I could do that!”. We found the same thing with microwave lemon curd and custard!
Ooooh now I want me some of that. And thanks for sharing Well’s tip of changing cooking vessels, that’s great. x
Kavey, I would have loved to have been able to share this with you! :)
This looks delicious Celia! I keep meaning to post my recipe for this up… I shall do soon!
Cool! Look forward to reading your take on it as well! Loved the lemon tart you’ve just blogged!
A favorite dessert of ours! I haven’t made one in years, what a shame!
I even have a tatin pan, so there’s no excuse for me. Must make it this Fall
gorgeous Tatin you made, Celia!
Sally, thank you! Although really the credit goes to Pete, I was just kitchen assistant on this one.. :)
Kudos to Pete for his patience Celia and it definitely pays off – look how beautiful it turns out!
Have a lovely day.
:-) Mandy
Thanks Mandy! Pete needs two doses of patience – one to get the apples completely caramelised and brown, and the other to put up with his wife, who’s calling out through the whole process, “I’m sure its burning! We have to take it out now!”. :D
You know I have never made one of these.. i shall try now that the apples are in! looks lovely, but i do not have the pan, I will look out for one! c
C, as I mentioned, we don’t use a dedicated tarte tatin pan, but it worked really well in the clear pyrex pie plate! I’m sure you could use almost any ovenproof pie plate in its place!
You and Pete work very well, together!
And your Tarte Tatin looks wonderful!
Thanks Heidi! We’ve always worked well together, for nearly thirty years. Oddly enough, the only thing we don’t do well together is play Five Hundred. Then we just frustrate each other! You’d think after all this time we’d have learnt to predict what card the other was going to play.. :)
Looks great. Caramelizing certain foods can be a test of the nerves for sure, but, according to at least one passed down story of Tarte Tatin’s beginning, you shouldn’t have to worry much about burning it: Here’s an excerpt from a wiki write up on it..and the lInk: God Bless You
“She started to make a traditional apple pie but left the apples cooking in butter and sugar for too long. Smelling the burning, she tried to rescue the dish by putting the pastry base on top of the pan of apples”,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarte_Tatin
Paul, that’s fabulous! It certainly tastes better with a slight charring than without! Thank you! :)
Oh that looks divine!
Oh that looks so good! Now I’m hungry.
Hi Rumpy, thanks for stopping by! Have you been to visit my friend Zeb’s blog? He’s also a dog, as is Bob who comes to visit us occasionally! :)
https://figjamandlimecordial.com/2011/03/28/dog-treats-for-bob/
Haha its tarte tatins all around I think! Yours looks lovely and caramelly :)
Told you we’d jinxed! :) xx
NQN has just done a post on tarte tatin as well. It is a sign that I need to make one. It will have to wait now until I get to Italy.
She certainly did! Lorraine’s recipe is here, folks.. :)
http://www.notquitenigella.com/2011/09/21/tarte-tatin/
Deb, have a wonderful trip!
That’s a great idea. I haven’t ever tried this for that exact reason.
I was out to dinner with my family last night and my uncle ordered Tarte Tatin. What he got was much more like an apple pie.
Claire, glad I’m not alone! It must have been disappointing to get apple pie when you were hoping for tarte tatin!
What a team!! Your tarte tatin looks gorgeous and I could really go for a piece of that right now. I’ve made one once so far and I did pear. I didn’t have a special pan either so I cooked the pears up in the skillet too, and then I remembered I had a deep dish stoneware baker in the top of the cupboard that never gets used. It worked perfectly to finish baking the tarte tatin in the oven. Do you ever play with adding some spices to the apples as they cook?
Mel, we don’t, but only because the caramel is so very fine on its own that I don’t like to mess with it. In our regular apple pies we often add a pinch of cinnamon. Have you tried Dan Lepard’s uppercrust apple pie? It’s laced with Calvados! :)
https://figjamandlimecordial.com/2010/08/29/roasted-potato-focaccia-and-upper-crust-apples/
your apples look really well caramelised and i love the fact that you use your own pastry..i’m surprised i’ve never made tarte tatin because i love fruit deserts and i also love making pastry..
Jane, thank you! That was what worried me, the apples were soooo brown before we put them into the dish that I was sure they’d burn in the oven…but they didn’t! :) I’d like to try Patricia Wells pear version when the fruit comes into season..
Gorgeous. I’d say more, but I think I have to dash off to the kitchen right now!
Thanks Kathryn! :D
It looks beautiful. I like to use shortcrust too, my favourite.
Tania, thank you! It was just so easy to use the pastry at hand – and I agree with you, I prefer shortcrust to flaky too!
Looks lovely Celia! Just the thing with a little vanilla icecream on the side :-)
(Little Monkey just caught sight of it too, and said YUMMM!)
Hehehe…your Little Monkey is such a foodie, Brydie! I wish I could make one for him! :)
My daughter has that mixture of brave and patient that you need for good tarte tatin too. Sadly I don’t. I try to go easy on the butter and sugar, can’t leave the apple alone long enough, stir too much, peek too often. I love eating it though.
Linda, I love that both your kids are such great cooks! :)
Must be tarte tatin week! I love this simple, but delicious dessert. I bought a Le Crueset tatin pan to make mine. It’s also a great size to use as a frypan.
Amanda, I eyed that pan off for years, but just couldn’t think of what to use it for other than tarte tatin, so never ended up buying it!
An all time favourite of mine, I do have a le creuset cast iron frypan to do this in but now you have come up with an alternative I don’t have to buy another for my house in Tasmania!
Roz, Emile Henry have come up with a clay one as well, which I’ve resisted. There’s no more room in my kitchen to store things! :)
Did you see Lorraine’s tarte tartin, it is a trend!!
Hehe..yes, but hers is far more stylish than mine! :)
I don’t believe you don’t have patience. So many things you do require it in spades! Lovely tart tatin – it’s something that’s hard to get right so thanks for all the advice.
Sally, Pete’s always telling me that I have the patience of a boiling kettle! Thank you though, and hope you enjoy this recipe! :)
Tarte tatin always scares me. Theres so few ingredients and seems quite simple but I feel like I will screw it up somehow so have never made it lol. You’ve inspired me though so I might just give it a go :)
Ah well, Nic, the worst that can happen if you stuff it up is you’ll have burnt a few apples and some pastry. Hmmm…no, actually, the worst that can happen is a second degree sugar burn, but if you’re careful, it should be ok.. ;-)
Yum that looks absolutely sensational. This is such a great dessert when done right – but too often is it is an insipid, tasteless thing in restaurants.
Thanks SG – I love it when the sugar gets to that almost burnt, very dark caramel stage!
I saw the email notice of this post just before I went shopping – so I bought apples because I knew I would have to give this a go. I had a TT that BDL cooked and It’s a very good memory. I haven’t looked at NQN’s yet and I know I won’t turn out a stylish TT, but I figure once it’s between my pearly whites stylish isn’t going to matter :)
Jan, you’re too funny, thank you for the vote of confidence! :) Lorraine’s TT is very pretty, ours is more..um..rustic.. ;-)
you have far better logic than I do! I used my tagine the first time I tried a tatin! You should have seen the mess. Your tatin looks scrummity :)
Tandy, the tagine should have worked – thank you for the warning as I was eyeing off my ceramic tagine, wondering if it would do the job.. :)
What an obvious idea! Thanks for sharing it, making tart tatin in a frying pan has always been scary especially when turning it out. Talking about tart tatin, it reminds me of one I ordered at a well known restaurant at Circular Quay. It came out cold, straight from the fridge!
Celia, what are you feeding your tomatoes?? Are your chooks helping them?
Hi Christine! Our tomatoes are growing indoors in a good potting mix to which we’ve added organic blood and bone. They also get (every couple of weeks) worm juice from the worm farm. They’re planted in self-watering pots, so they’ve always got plenty of water, and the enclosed verandah is north-facing. We’re still not sure whether or not they’ll get enough sunlight to ripen, but they’re certainly growing quickly!
We prefer our tarte tatin warm! :)
Oh it looks so delicious! It’s dripping with the delightful sweetness :)
Thanks Tes! It’s actually more dark caramel than very sweet, which is what makes it so moreish! :)
Oooh, yummy! Great teamwork guys :-) I use my stainless steel frypan to go straight from the stovetop to the oven, it’s lighter for flipping over too. I wouldn’t have thought to use sweet pastry, but what a great idea!
Becca, I’m so lazy, we just use June’s pastry for everything because I’ve always got it in the freezer! It works really well here though – goes quite crisp and matches the fruit very well..
Hah!!! Yes I’ve been making this for years now – though always with pears!! It is probably my signature dish. I cook the pears and suger in a wok and then tip it into the glass pyrex dish before covering with her pate brisee, which really is a super pastry. Yumm, Celia, glad you have found it. Isn’t it a spectacular dish?? You should try it with beurre boscs!
Ooh!! here’s my link too! http://thirtyminutes.typepad.com/thirty_minutes/2007/05/jealousy_is_a_c.html
Thanks Deb! We haven’t tried the original – as I was just saying to Becca, we tend to use June’s pastry for all our sweet pies, as it’s so easy to keep it in the freezer. I’ll have to watch out for pears in season! :)
Going to have to rectify the never having made tarte tatin situation. Great tip on changing cooking tin half way – I’ll never make it otherwise!
C, it really was one of those things in my head – “oh, I can’t do that because I don’t have xyz”. It’s nice to be able to work around those sort of internal limitations! :)
Tart tartine is always lovely. Did small ones with crab-apples once too.
Lee, we love it, and make it often as a dessert treat. Never thought to try it with crabapples – the only ones we’ve ever had have been too tiny to deseed! :)
The pan solution is out there, folks. Believe it or not, there’s a “non-stick” pan that can go directly from stove-top to your oven and is safe and happy up to 800 degrees F. Its called the “green pan” and is promoted by celeb chef Todd English and in the US is available via….believe it or not…the Home Shopping Network–HSN. These “green pans” come in all shapes, sizes and configurations, and I’ve done all kinds of stove-to-oven cookery with them with great success–they are truly the best even-heat-distribution pans in the non-stick universe and yes, they really do clean up afterwards. I LOVE tatins, and I’m going to try this recipe with my green pan skillet and see how it turns out. Stay tuned!
Dan, my non-stick pans go into the oven, I’ve just never made a TT in one before! We use WOLL pans and absolutely love them! Before that we’d had a terrible run with non-stick pans always self-destructing after about six months, so Pete went into the kitchenware store and asked the man for a pan that his Chinese wife, who was incapable of cooking something on low heat, could use. The WOLL pans have been great – we’re only just starting to wear them out now, and that’s after five years of continuous usage! I loved the instructions that came with them, which basically said to heat the empty pan over a flame before adding oil – the pan can get to 300C!
http://www.woll-cookware.com
I am going to try this! It’s Fall here and good apples are everywhere.
Maz.
Oh golly gosh, it looks perfect. The caramelization is wonderful. I’m drooling all over the iPad. Lol. Any left overs?
The caramelization looks perfect. I would love a slice right now with my tea …please…
No Celia, I have no specific recipe for Tarte Tatin – I’ve never made it. Not sure why not, because I love it and yours looks so delicious = Pete’s caramelised those apples to perfection.