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Simple Apple Tart
It's been hovering in the teens all week and I cannot stop myself from sleeping in a little longer than I usually do. The dogs are allowed out for ten minutes at a time; I worry about colds and infection. They roam the fence and bark at a brown rabbit that has been in our back yard for a week. I worry the ground is too frozen for a burrow. I wonder how he got so lost.
And in the fog of steam from my coffee and steam from my breath, I bake to remember the fog of my childhood. Baked apples and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Oatmeal cookies and sweetened rice with milk. It's winters like these, the kinds that are quick and silent as a dagger, that make me glad I'm back in Pennsylvania.
I'll wait out this Polar Vortex from the comfort of my kitchen, the yellow light of the oven glowing in the palest shade of orange I have ever seen.
Apple Tart with Oatmeal Crust
I used a 14" tart pan for this recipe and I do recommend you doing the same, both for presentation and ease. I adapted my crust from this one and found it super simple and delicious, bringing me back to cinnamon oatmeal Quaker packets along the way. Feel free to try any other type of fruit for this tart, though I am particularly partial to apple.
Ingredients for Oatmeal Crust:
- 3/4 cup quick cooking oats
- 1/2 cup AP flour
- 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
- 6 TB butter, cold and cut into cubes
- Pinch of salt
- 1-2 TB ice water
Directions for Oatmeal Crust:
- Prepare your pan and preheat oven to 350*F
- In a food processor, combine all ingredients except the water
- Pulse until fat is pea-sized
- Turn motor on and add ice water until a dough just barely forms from the liquid
- With floured hands, press crust into your tart pan
- Bake for 12 minutes
- Turn oven up to 400*F
Ingredients for Filling:
- 6 TB light corn syrup
- 2 TB molasses
- 1 egg + 1 yolk
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 TB cinnamon
- 2 TB butter, melted
Directions for Filling:
- Whisk all ingredients
- Pour over par-baked oatmeal crust
Assembly and Final Directions: Thinly slice two apples and top your tart filling with these. Add a squeeze of orange juice or rum for a spike and sprinkle with a tiny bit of sea salt and a little more cinnamon. Bake for an additional 15 minutes or until filling is set. To prevent your crust burning, you may want to use a bit of aluminum on the edges.
Allow to cool slightly before releasing from the pan and serve warm or cold with confecioner's sugar and ice cream.
Caramel Apple Brie en Croute
The nights are cold and I can see my breath and the days are cloudless, relentless. The backyard is dappled red, then orange, and brown and brittle grass pokes through. It's the perfect weather for reading out on the porch, cuddling up under a blanket to watch a bad horror movie, or drink a beer while the sun fades to bruised clouds that stretch out over the fields by my house.
It's fall now, a fall that's been going on for weeks but never fully committed itself to sweater weather and foggy breath. I'm still waiting on that. But in the meantime, I was inspired by Farmhouse Pottery's Baker's Rolling Pin to create a dish that highlights all the beauty of autumn, but can be made year-round. I think I found the perfect mix in this caramel apple brie en croute dish.
Caramel Apple Brie en Croute
Ingredients:
- ¼ cup of spiced orange caramel sauce (you will have a lot leftover, but it keeps well and is good on everything!)
- 1 wheel of brie
- 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold
- 3 tablespoons vegetable shortening, cold
- ½ tablespoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 ¾ cup all-purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- Pinch of salt
- ¼ cup ice water
- 7-8 slices of a honeycrisp apple (or whatever variety you like!)
- 1 egg, whisked with 1 TB water to create an egg was
Directions:
- Place butter, shortening, vanilla, flour, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a food processor, fitted with the blade attachment.
- Pulse processor five or six times, or until fats are the size of peas and incorporated into the flour.
- With motor running, pour water in a slow and steady stream through the tube until dough forms and sticks away from the walls of the bowl. You may need a little more water to get a solid dough.
- Dump dough onto a floured work surface and pat into a disc.
- Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit at this time.
- When thirty minutes are done, roll dough out onto a floured work surface and roll out into a circle shape about ¼” in thickness
- Now, for ease, use a dinner plate as your pattern and cut dough into a large circle
- Reserve the remaining dough for another use and just focus on the dinner plate-sized circle now
- Place brie wheel in center of your dough and lay apple slices on top
- Pour your caramel over the apple and brie
- Now, paint edges of dough with a pastry brush and your egg wash
- Take edge of dough and fold into center of apples, pinching slightly to hold shape
- Repeat with remaining edges to seal into a dumpling
- Brush with more egg wash and sprinkle with a little sugar
- Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes, or until crust is puffed and golden, but check at the 15 mark as cheese may leak out and you might have to clean this up to prevent burning!
- Allow to cool slightly, but serve warm with more apple slices and carame
Small Updates and a Recipe
I moved back to California this week and it has been an exhausting time. I chased the sunlight and forgot what timezone I was in. I denied myself sleep and sat in silence, listening to Nolan sing to the radio under his breath. We talked a lot about nothing. We took Milo with us. I'll speak more about this all in time, because, between packing, concerts, and Los Angeles this week, time is something I'm lacking right now.
I realized it's been a week or two since I posted a recipe and I wanted to get the last of the recipes of my life in San Antonio out. To start new, to start fresh. I have two recipes lined up for next week that I am excited to try, both inspired by dates I've taken with Nolan since my return to California. A celebration, a commemoration, and apology.
But for now, enjoy the last thing I baked in my little studio kitchen--Dorie Greenspan's Custardy Apple Squares, sliced with a pocket knife my uncle got in the army. Even when apples remind me of home, they don't remind me of the home I came from. They remind me of Pennsylvania, teenage dreams of France, and not the white-walled silence of that small apartment in San Antonio that I loved so much.
Dorie Greenspan's Custardy Apple Squares (via Food52)
Ingredients
- 3 medium apples (juicy, sweet)
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 2 eggs
- 1/3 cup granulated sugar
- Pinch of fine sea salt
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 6 tablespoons whole milk
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled (but still liquid)
Directions
- Heat the oven to 400° F. Butter an 8-inch square baking pan and line the bottom with parchment paper.
- Peel the apples. If you have a mandoline, slice the apples thinly, turning when you reach the core. (The slices should be thin but not transparent.) If you don't have a mandoline, simply core and slice as thinly as you manage. (Don't worry about the slices being impossibly precise or thin.)
- In a bowl, whisk together the flour and baking powder.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, and salt for a couple of minutes, or until the sugar dissolves and the eggs become pale. Whisk in the vanilla, then the milk and the melted butter. Add the flour and whisk until smooth. With a spatula, gently fold in the apples until each slice is coated. Scrape the batter into the pan and roughly even out the top.
- Bake the cake for 40 to 50 minutes or until golden and uniformly puffed. A skewer in the middle will come out clean. Transfer to a rack to cool, then slice and dust with the optional confectioners' sugar.
- I highly recommend eating this with a topping made of freshly-whipped cream, a small amount of almond butter, and a pinch of cinnamon