Tarte Tatin

Ingredients

1 sheet ready-rolled puff pastry
4 Granny Smith apples
125g caster sugar
100ml water
25g butter, unsalted and chopped

Method

Preheat oven to 200C.

Combine the sugar and water in a small (20cm) ovenproof frying pan or saucepan over a medium heat. Stir through until the sugar dissolved. Turn up the heat and bring to the boil. Without stirring, continue to boil the sugar syrup until it begins to caramelise. Swirl the mixture to even out the colour.

Remove pan from heat and add butter pieces and swirl again to combine.

Carefully place the apple pieces into the caramel to make a circle. The core-side of the apple pieces should be facing upwards. Cut the remaining apple pieces to fill in the gaps between the bigger pieces.

Place back on a medium heat for 10 minutes to begin the cooking and the caramelising of the apples.

Meanwhile, trim the pastry sheet into a circle that is slightly larger than the circle made by the apple pieces in the pan.

Remove the pan from the heat and cover with the pasty, tucking the edges down and over all the apple pieces.

Bake in the oven for 25 minutes until the pastry has puffed up and is golden brown. Allow to sit for a couple of minutes in the pan before inverting on to a serving plate.

Serve with cream or ice cream.

Notes

This makes the most delicious wintery dessert that will please everyone.
As with many recipes that use few ingredients, the trick to this recipe is all in the technique! The most important thing to do before you start is to make sure you have the right size pan, otherwise you will find that all the delicious caramel will run out and away from the apple pieces.
I will admit that I had a little difficulty inverting the pan onto a plate and I had to use a spatula to ease the apples from the pan before I successfully got it on the plate. You should also choose a plate with a lip to catch any of the extra caramel that may escape during the flipping process.

This Tarte Tatin recipe was created by Ella Walsh for Kidspot, New Zealand’s best recipe finder.