Tuesdays With Dorie: French Apple Tart

This week's Tuesdays With Dorie adventure was French Apple Tart. Lots of little steps for this one, but I spread it over a couple of days, which made the process manageable. I started off by making the roasted-apple filling, then refrigerating it for a day. I was pretty happy with how the filling turned out, but was skeptical about how it would fare as tart filling. Meanwhile, rather than use the pie dough recipe in Baking With Julia, I turned to my standby vodka crust from Cook's Illustrated. In addition to being easier to put together and handle, it also makes a single crust.

As I was gearing up to start putting things together, I pulled out my tart pans and discovered I have three 9-in. tart pans with removable bottoms. Only one of them, however, has the bottom ring. Good grief. 

Anyway, after I blind-baked the crust, I filled it and put sliced apples on top. In hindsight, I know I needed more apples on top as they shrunk a bit while baking. I ended up having enough leftover pie dough and filling for a mini-tart, so I made one of those as well.

Again, when it came out of the oven, the apples on top had shrunk. Even though I baked the tart 15 minutes longer than the recommended time, I didn't get the slightly blackened edges to the apples either, or much of a caramelized glaze from the sugar sprinkled on top. However, I thought it ended up looking pretty terrific.

Just out of the oven

The tart was out of the oven and cooled just in time for Downton Abbey. Couldn't have worked out any better than that!

This is a recipe I'd revisit in a heartbeat. It might be fun to make the roasted apples with some raspberries or maybe cranberries, too, to play around with the filling.

For the recipe, visit this week's host, Laws of the Kitchen.