My "Classic Tarte Tatin" Adventure

Bags of apples in the grocery store have been speaking to me. “Bake me, bake me!” they say. So last Sunday I embarked on another cooking adventure—baking the Classic Tarte Tatin.

After skinning and coring apples for over an hour I no longer wondered who ever buys those special tools to core apples. I watched the butter and sugar melt together in a frying mesmerized by the deep mahogany of the caramel seeping through the buttery paste. The whiff of burnt sugar brought me out of my happy stupor. I laid out the apple halves and admired the perfect pattern they formed in the pan as they cooked. My rolled out pastry did not look as pretty, but it did not have to be. The tart would be flipped when done, and the pastry would remain at the bottom to be eaten but not be seen.

With everything ready for baking I pushed the frying pan into the oven, but… the oven door would not shut. Prior to cooking I spent a long time making sure that my frying pan could withstand the heat of the oven, but it never occurred to me to check if it will fit. The pan with its nice long handle was too big for my smaller-then-standard-size oven.

Panic! I could see the pastry slowly melting on top of the warm caramelized apples. I could see the apples starting to spread apart destroying the pattern. I called Nick, because in a crisis I always call my husband. Nick did not help with his “move the tart into a smaller baking dish” solution. “That would destroy the amazing apple pattern,” I protested. Nick was not too sympathetic.

I hung up and tried to think of any neighbors I knew on whom I could impose with my tart. I called a friend who lives across the street in hopes that he was home, had a regular sized oven and was willing to let me use it. Luckily for him, he did not pick up. Since I clearly had no other choice, I followed Nick’s advice after all. I scooped the tart into a normal baking dish, and off it went into the oven to bake.

Half an hour later I had my “classic tarte tatin”—a shapeless mass with blotches of torn pastry on top. Caramelized apple puree betrayed the taste of burned sugar. For me a large scoop of vanilla ice cream obscured the bitterness quite well. Nick, on the other hand, was not convinced that apple mush mixed in with the soft pie crust constituted a worthy dessert. So he went back to his beloved sherbet instead.

Since the failure, I have found a simpler tarte tatin recipe, where the frying pan does not need to go into the oven. Perhaps it is not "Classic", but I think I will try this one next time, hopefully with a little more luck.