Apple tarte tatin with crème diplomat

TIME3 hours MAKES6 servings PORTION
0.5x 1x 2x 3x

From 2017-2018, there was a great (although underappreciated) cooking reality show on SBS here in Australia called The Chef’s Line. Each week, 4 Australian home cooks would go up against the chef’s line of a restaurant, eliminating either a home cook or a chef (more often than not the head chef would win, but there were some upsets!).

One week, the pastry chef at a restaurant cooked individual apple tarte tatin’s, and the result looked so good I had to try it at home. It went remarkably well for such an involved recipe (and my first time making puff pastry from scratch), but I found that stainless steel moulds worked a lot better for cooking the apple and crisping the puff pastry.

INGREDIENTS

Crème diplomat

  • 250ml milk
  • 1/2 vanilla bean
  • 1 whole egg
  • 55g caster sugar
  • 30g cornflour
  • 30g unsalted butter
  • 100ml pure cream

Puff pastry

  • 240g plain flour
  • 20g caster sugar
  • 5g yeast
  • 5g salt
  • 165g unsalted butter (shaped into a 10 cm square, slightly softened)
  • 140g demerara sugar

Caramelised apples

  • 100g caster sugar
  • 25g unsalted butter

  • 3 medium granny smith apples (peeled and halved, core removed)

  • Oven temperatures are for conventional; if using fan-forced (convection), reduce the temperature

  • by 20˚C. We use Australian tablespoons and cups: 1 teaspoon equals 5 ml; 1 tablespoon equals 20
  • ml; 1 cup equals 250 ml. All herbs are fresh (unless specified) and cups are lightly packed. All
  • vegetables are medium size and peeled, unless specified. All eggs are 55-60 g, unless specified.

STEPS

Crème pâtissière

  1. Place the milk and vanilla bean in a saucepan over low heat until hot but not boiling. Whisk the egg, sugar and cornflour in a bowl until smooth. Whisking continuously, gradually add the hot milk and whisk until well combined. Strain the milk through a fine strainer, return to the pan and stir over low heat until the mixture is thick and smooth. Remove from the heat and whisk in the butter. Pour the mixture into a tray, cover with plastic wrap to prevent a skin from forming.

Mix the puff pastry

  1. Combine the flour, sugar, yeast and salt in a large bowl. Add 145 ml water and combine until a dough comes together. Shape into a rough square, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate while you caramelise the apples.

Caramelised apples

  1. Place the sugar and 185 ml water in a frying pan and cook over high heat until it starts to caramelise. Add the butter and swirl to combine until the caramel is a golden amber colour. Remove from the heat, add the apple halves and stir until evenly coated in caramel.

  2. Spray 6 metal moulds (about 375 ml capacity) with oil. Divide most of the caramel between the moulds, then place an apple half in each mould with the core facing upwards. Reserve the remaining caramel for serving.

Fold the pastry and bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 200˚C.

  2. Remove the pastry from the refrigerator and roll out on a lightly floured surface into a 15 cm square. Place the square of butter in the centre of the dough and enclose the dough around the butter. Roll out into a 10 cm x 20 cm rectangle and sprinkle evenly with one third of the demerara sugar. Fold the outside edges into the centre, creating a letter fold and keeping the sugar in the middle. Turn the pastry 90 degrees, then repeat the rolling and folding two more times using up the demerara sugar. If the butter is getting too soft to work with, then refrigerate the pastry until the butter is firm but not hard.

  3. Once the rolling and folding process is complete, roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface until 1.5 cm-thick. Using a pastry cutter, stamp out six circles the same size as the moulds. Place the pastry on top of the apples in each of the moulds, tucking the pastry gently in around the edges like tucking in a blanket. Bake for 20 minutes or until the pastry is golden and crisp.

Crème diplomat

  1. Just before serving, beat the cream until soft peaks form, then fold through the cold creme pâtissière.

  2. To serve, invert the moulds onto serving plates. Drizzle the reserved caramel around the tarte tatin and serve with a quenelle of diplomat crème.

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