Quick Classic Apple Tart

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Cristine of Cooking with Cristine. She picked Quick Classic Berry Tart, which you can see I didn’t exactly make this week. If you’d like the complete recipe, visit Cristine’s blog. You can also check out how all the other Tuesdays with Dorie bloggers did with this week’s recipe. I think that people did some different things this week!

I went to the store to get berries, but they only had strawberries and I didn’t want to make a strawberry tart. They had some other berries, but I try to buy more local produce and I didn’t want to buy berries from half way around the world. I decided to use apples instead. I can always get local apples here in Washington. I thought I would cook those up and it would make a fine topping. I also made a custard/pudding instead of the pastry cream. That ended up not being the best decision since it didn’t set up quite as well as the pastry cream would have.

When I went to make the caramelized apple topping, I decided to check next week’s Dorie recipe to see how many of the apples I should use. I had a bunch of apples and I figured I would adjust based on how many apples I needed for next week. Much to my surprise, I realized that I would be making caramelized apples for next week’s recipe. Oh well, it’s just practice! The apples cooked up beautifully, although they took a lot longer than the recipe said it would take to cook.

I put everything together and it looked great and it did taste great, but my tart was very delicate. I’ve made this crust before and never had issues, but this time the crust basically shattered when I cut the tart. Maybe the custard/pudding was too wet or something. This tart was really good, the sweet butter crust, the spiced apples, and the custard were nice together. The topping was especially good, so now I am really looking forward to next week’s recipe.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 377