The Tarte Tatin

Even though I hadn’t quite finished yet, I thought I’d give myself and you all a bit of a break with a bit of tarte Tatin. This was my first time making a tarte Tatin. It was a both a flop and not a flop at the same time. I’ll explain. I wanted the caramel to be a bit more compact, perhaps a tad more of a darker golden bronze colour. To my dismay the caramel turned out sort of runnyish and quite pale in colour intensity. On the other hand it was not a flop because it was really good..

My personal tarte Tatin history started off with my quest last year to make tarte Tatin. To begin with, I needed a special tarte Tatin dish, because you’re supposed to make the caramel and cook the apples on the stove, and then put the pastry on top and shove the whole thing in the oven. The recipient would have to be stove and oven resistant. Like a skillet for example. I wandered around the town looking for such a thing. Whenever such a scarce object was found it was ridiculously expensive and I wasn’t willing to pay for it.

Then last year during our bike ride to Montreuil-sur-Mer, I bought a tarte Tatin dish thing there. I say dish thing because it’s not exactly a skillet. It looks more like a normal cake dish but is sort of more thick, strong and resistant.

I guess I took so long in actually making a tarte Tatin because – typical of me – I assumed it was be extremely difficult. But it was not.

My lesson learnt in this batch of tarte Tatin was that I am used to not following recipes properly, and maybe that’s the way things should be. As it was my first time and I wanted to make it properly, I actually followed a recipe.

Mistake.

What went wrong was that within the recipe it stated: Be very careful not to burn the caramel. So I decided to be very careful. As in, very careful. It turned out that I was too careful, and probably didn’t allow the sugar to caramelise enough.

Not to worry, lesson learnt there. Apart from that, I’ve read loads of cool tips so that my future tarte Tatin take 2 should turn out exactly how I want it to. When I do perfect my recipe, then I’ll publish it. Meanwhile, here is my finished tarte Tatin photo. Pardon the atrocious lighting. When I started peeling the apples there was a gorgeous evening light. By the time I had finished baking the sun gone down and there was just my ugly orange kitchen lighting. Gosh, I need to make it again soon. If possible tomorrow.

Thank you for reading!