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Tarte Tatin (Upside-Down Caramelised Apple Tart)

Name: Tarte Tatin (Upside-Down Caramelised Apple Tart)
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 1 h
Total time: 1 h 25 min
Yield: 8 servings
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: 1 kg apples; 1 tbsp lemon juice; 150 g sugar; 60 g unsalted butter; 1 pinch salt; 0.5 vanilla pod; 250 g puff pastry; 4 tbsp crème fraîche

The upside-down apple tart of the Centre of France: apples laid on caramel, pastry over the top, baked, and the whole thing turned out. Being back to front is the point. An ordinary tart has a base that must survive a wet filling, which is why shells get blind-baked or waterproofed. This one removes the problem instead — the pastry is a lid, it never touches liquid and bakes in dry oven air, and the apples have already given up their water into the caramel before the oven.

Ingredients

8servings

Apples
apples · a firm variety — Reinette, Boskoop, Braeburn. One that collapses turns to sauce1 kg
lemon juice1 tbsp
Caramel
sugar150 g
unsalted butter · cold, diced60 g
salt1 pinch
vanilla pod · optional; a cinnamon stick does the same job0.5
Pastry and to serve
puff pastry · shop-bought is fine; pâte brisée is equally traditional250 g
crème fraîche · to serve; cream or vanilla ice cream also4 tbsp

Steps

Peel the apples, quarter them, cut out the cores and toss with the lemon juice. The variety is an ingredient — one that collapses loses its shape in the pan and you end up with apple sauce under pastry.
Spread the sugar evenly in a 24cm ovenproof cast-iron pan and melt it over medium heat, about 8 minutes, swirling but never stirring. When the edges go amber, turn the pan to even the colour. Judging by colour makes you late — by the time you see the shade you want you are past it (what sugar does).
⏲ 8 min
Off the heat, stir in the cold butter and the salt until it melts. Scrape in the vanilla now if you are using it. It bubbles hard for a moment and then goes smooth.
Pack the apples in standing on a cut edge, working round from the rim inwards, as tightly as they will go. They shrink by nearly half, so a gap you can see now is a hole in the finished tart.
Simmer uncovered over medium-low heat for 22 minutes. The apples release water, the caramel thins, and then that water boils off and it thickens again until the syrup falls in drops. This stage is the dish — take the water out here or it thins the caramel in the oven and wets the underside of the pastry.
⏲ 22 min
Take the pan off the heat and let it cool until you can touch it comfortably. Pastry laid on a hot pan melts its butter and the layers collapse (dough and gluten).
Cut the puff pastry 2cm wider than the pan, lay it over and tuck the overhang down between the apples and the pan wall. Cut four or five steam holes with a knife tip; without them the pastry balloons and lifts away from the fruit.
Bake at 200C for 27 minutes, until the pastry is deep gold and caramel bubbles at the edge (what your oven is doing).
⏲ 27 min
Leave it exactly 5 minutes, then cover with a plate wider than the pan and invert in one movement. Left longer the caramel sets and glues it down — if that happens, a minute back on low heat releases it. Any apple left in the pan goes back where it belongs.
⏲ 5 min

Tips & Variations

Variations

Being upside down removes the problem rather than solving it. The old difficulty with a wet filling is a soggy base, and the standard answer is to bake the shell first — blind baking, which is what quiche and pastel de nata do. Tarte Tatin does not solve that problem; it designs it away. The pastry is a lid, so it never meets liquid and bakes only in dry oven air. That is why there is no blind-baking step in this recipe.
It is the exact inverse of apple pie. There, wet apples are enclosed in pastry, so you thicken the juice with starch and worry about the base. Here the apples give up their water in the pan before the oven. Same fruit, opposite order. Apfelstrudel is a third answer again: a layer of breadcrumbs to soak the juice up.
The fourth point on this site's caramel axis. Tanghulu takes sugar to 155C so all the water leaves and it sets like glass; Dobos torte casts it as a sheet and scores it while it is still plastic; Bündner Nusstorte adds cream so that it will not set. Tarte Tatin is another way again — the apples keep giving up water, which keeps redissolving the caramel, so it stays a sauce. Not something added, but something the filling does.
The variety is half the dish. Reinette, Boskoop, Braeburn, Cox — firm-fleshed and with some acidity. One that breaks down, like Bramley or Golden Delicious, will not survive twenty-two minutes in the pan.
Turning it out is the only dangerous moment. Five minutes is while the caramel still flows. Half an hour and it has set into the pan; straight from the oven and hot syrup runs off the edge.
Savoury tatins are taken just as seriously. Onion, cherry tomato, endive or shallot, the same method. Cut the sugar back and put the acidity in with a little balsamic or sherry vinegar.
The history. It is named for the Tatin sisters, who kept an inn at Lamotte-Beuvron in Loir-et-Cher at the end of the nineteenth century. The famous story is that one of them forgot the pastry, put it on top and baked the tart upside down by accident — but tarts baked fruit-side-down existed before that, so the story is best enjoyed rather than believed. The name and the place are the part that is documented.
Serving temperature. Warm rather than hot or cold, with crème fraîche or vanilla ice cream. Cold the caramel is hard; hot it runs off (serving temperature).

Tips

The pan is the equipment. A 24cm cast-iron skillet that goes on the hob and in the oven — a plastic handle rules a pan out. Failing that you can move the caramel and apples to a cake tin, but cooking and baking in one pan is easier and fails less.
Swirl the caramel, never stir it. Stirring encourages the sugar to recrystallise into grains. Turning the pan to even the colour is all it needs.
Add the butter cold. Room-temperature butter into hot caramel splits more readily.
Pack the apples tight. The commonest failure is gaping holes between the pieces after baking, and the cause is always a loose arrangement at the start.
Let the pan cool before the pastry goes on. Laid on hot metal, the butter layers in puff pastry melt and it will not rise.
Do not forget the steam holes. Pastry that domes lifts away from the fruit, and the tart collapses out of shape when you invert it.
It can be made a day ahead. Leave it in the pan, and to serve put it back on low heat for two or three minutes to loosen the caramel before turning it out.
Keep the syrup left in the pan. Reduce it for a moment and spoon it over the turned-out tart.