18 January 2009

Apple tart

I made an apple tart for a belated Christmas dinner. Actually it was lunch. I dug into my cardboard boxes in het cellar to find the little book with my grandfather's recipes. He gave instructions for dough and pastry cream, but not for the apples, so I improvised.



For the dough

250 g flour
pinch of salt
2 tbsp sugar
1 packet of vanilla sugar
180 g butter
1 egg yolk
1/2 dl water

For the pastry cream

1 egg
50 g sugar
3 tbsp flour
1 packet vanilla sugar or 1/2 vanilla pod
1/2 l milk
pinch of salt

For the apples

4 apples (not a mushy type)
juice of 1/2 lemon
some sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Add salt, sugar and vanilla sugar to flour and mix. Add butter and egg yolk and knead into a dough. Add the water bit by bit.
Let the dough rest for 2 hours in the fridge.
Grease a tart dish, roll out the dough and put it in the dish. Cover with baking paper and with baking beans. Bake for 25 min. at 200° C. Remove baking paper and beans and let it cool for a bit.
Peel and core the apples and slice them very thinly. Cover them with lemon juice to prevent them from browning. Take the apples out of the juice and cook them at very low heat with some sugar and cinnamon. They should just be slightly cooked and not fall apart.
Whisk egg with sugar in a cooking pan, add flour and whisk again.
Boil milk with vanilla (sugar). After boiling, add it to the egg and let it boil for a few minutes until it thickens. Pour into the baked dough.
Decorate with the apples. Put the slices close together.

Notes
I wonder if the pastry cream would taste even better when made just with the egg yolk instead of the whole egg.
You can put the apple slices closer together than I did in the picture.
The dough shrinks a little when baking, so you can leave an extra cm at the bordere when filling the tart dish.

According to my grandfather you could also make this tart with bananas or other fruit, which you don't need to cook.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

excellent asvice as to the crust, back to your first source, too. And beautiful pic!