I offered to bring the dessert for a dinner party last Saturday. This was foolishly bold, given my notable non-expertise in the confectionery arts. But I knew that our hosts, Lars and Karen, were forgiving friends and moreover would feed us so well and bountifully that we wouldn’t have desire or capacity for an elaborate dessert. So I turned to my old standby, a simple apple tart.
My giant recipe binder has three good apple tart recipes that I’ve clipped from magazines, one very elaborate, one classy but pretty easy, and one quite minimal. The third, from an old issue of Saveur, is the one I use most often. The only ingredients are apples, sugar, and a plain short pastry crust made with butter.
Apples are difficult this season, maybe because our summer and fall were so rainy. The stores offer lots of choices, but a variety that’s crisp and juicy when you buy it one time may be dull and mushy when you come back the next time. However, I found some beautiful Romes this week. So beautiful that I bought too many; the tart only ever needs two or three. Well, applesauce coming up!
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I’d made the pastry the day before, so I just had to roll it out and line a tart pan. In my page on favorite kitchen tools I’ve talked about how much I like the Norpro pastry frame. Here it is in action:
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The recipe suggests using a false-bottomed pan so the tart can be free-standing when served. But since I’d be carrying it along Greenwich Village Saturday-night sidewalks, I took a sturdier ceramic dish. I sprinkled a tablespoon of sugar over the pastry base, paved it with thin slices of apple, sprinkled more sugar over them, and baked it.
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The apple slices cooked properly and looked pretty, but you can see that the edges of the crust are quite dark. I’m having trouble with my electric ovens again – they’re running not hot enough in the lower settings, too hot at the higher ones. The tart was supposed to take 40 minutes at 425 degrees. Fortunately, I checked it after 30 minutes and pulled it out immediately. To compensate for that mishap, I added one thing that isn’t in the recipe – I painted the apples with a glaze made with apricot preserves.
The dinner was fully as delicious and as copious as we’d expected, and the hosts were good enough to say the tart was just the kind of dessert they liked best. It might even have been true, because the four of us almost finished the whole tart.
It was in fact a delicious tart and truly just the kind of dessert we like best! The little bit leftover didn’t last very long either…