TWD: Tarte Tatin

I'm not going to lie here - I stuffed the ballot box when we began voting for Tuesdays with Dorie's two year anniversary treat. Not to say I'm as bad as Clara - she took to the streets (aka Twitter) to lobby for white chocolate raspberry brownies! But seriously, how could they beat out heavily caramelized apples topped in puff pastry, baked, and inverted so that caramel goes everywhere? Two words - they can't.


This was my New Year's Eve dessert, since the fiance and I had a couple friends coming up from the Milwaukee area to celebrate with us. Well, celebrate might be stretching it. Basically, we ate, ate some more, played a board game, ate and drank, watched the ball drop, and went to bed. Yeah, we're exciting folks! But what does it matter when you have homemade baguettes being served alongside pasta all'Amatriciana, a glass of wine, and a slice of tarte tatin? Who really cares about a ball dropping at that point? If you still care about the ball dropping, I just have to come out and say it - you probably hate freedom and puppies. Just sayin'.


The best part was definitely being able to make a half recipe in my smaller cast iron skillet. I used natural cane sugar and a bit less than half the butter called for, and got the caramel [thisclose] to burnt before popping the puff pastry on top and baking it. Because very little can be better than dark, dark caramel on top of sweet apples, right? Needless to say though, I had to foist the remainder of the tarte upon my friends, as it was way too dangerous to have sitting around, even without any New Year's resolutions.


Last Week: Chocolate Cheesecake
This Week: Cocoa-Buttermilk Birthday Cake (for a birthday even!)
Next Week: Mrs. Vogel's Scherben (the only thing making deep frying these okay is saying the word "scherben" over and over again)