Tarte Tatin - Turnover apple pie

I'm back at my parent's place for Christmas and when I got back, my mom wanted a Tarte Tatin really badly, she had already bought apples and looked through recipes !
We went through more recipes to compare and chose the best way to bake it. It was a nice teamwork.

~~ The result was a bit too good for our bodyline ~~

We looked in "Le Larousse de la cuisine" which is like an encyclopedia about cooking,
all the famous recipe... it's a dictionnary. Then we checked the recipe of Christophe Féron
in Christophe Felder's book : "Exquises Pâtisseries pour les fêtes".
We've also checked the recipe of Guy Savoy... etc.
To conclude, there is many way to proceed. 

Finally we did not pick the easy one,
but the most interesting one.

So we made a mix of those recipes.
Not too much butter, a home made shortcrust dough, vanilla flavoured (or cinnamon)
Baked on the stove and in the oven.

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For 10 people (9inch pie)Pour une tarte tartin d'une dizaine de personne (22cm de diamètre) 

Use a high mold (3inch at least) 
If you have a big pan, that goes in the oven and on the stove, it's fine too.

   You will need :   

1 shortcrust dough flavoured
- vanilla or cinnamon -

5 to 6 apples, depending on their size

- golden, reinettes, boskop, braeburn... a firm one -

 1/3 cup of sugar, white or brown (2.8oz/80gr)

1/2 stick of butter (5tbsp/1.8oz/50gr)

1tbsp of water 

salt
vanilla extract 

cinammon :)

Prepare the shortcrust dough

Make your shortcrust dough with unsalted butter and a pinch of salt

Add 1/2tbsp of vanilla extract stirred in 1/2tbsp of sugar in the water

Allumer le four à 200°C

Prepare the apple

Rinse and peel the apples, cut them in half and remove the seeds

- you can remove the seeds after cutting them if you prefer -

Depending on their size, cut these halves in 3 or 4 slices

- 1 apple is cut in 6 pieces or 8 if it's a big apple 

Pick a mold that goes on the stove and in the oven.
Place it on your stove at low heat, and melt the butter in it. Add the apple in and stir delicately
so they get fully covered of butter.

Leave them 3 to 5 minutes to get buttery and a bit yellowish and remove them from the mold,
they must not cook too much, they are still firm

- some butter is left in the mold, that's good -

Faire un caramel

Pour sugar in the buttered mold, add 1tbsp of water and 1pinch of salt
Put it on high/medium heat to make a caramel (toffee)

Stir with a wooden spoon so it won't burn

It must have a really dark caramel shade and be liquid
Turn off the fire, take the mold in hands > with gloves
and do a circular move so the caramel gets everywhere in the mold
By getting cooler, it gets harder and will stay in place

Place apples

When the caramel is still soft but sticky enough to stop moving,
place the apples as flower petals, close from each other,
press on the mold when placing them to get the caramel going in between.
Start by the outter circle with the biggest slices, then the inner circle.
You have extra apple left, use them in smal pieces to fill in the holes.

- about a half apple is enough -

Spread some cinnamon on the apple if you like it :)

Making the Tatin

Flatten your dough on a floured table, fold it delicately in half, then in 4. Carry it carefully on your apples, folds in the center. Unfold it to cover the pie.
Make the dough stick on the edges toward the apples. Don't use a fork to stab it.

Bake 40 minutes or so.

The dough must be real golden.

Turn out when tepid :)

- afer 15 minutes out of the oven -

Serve tepid with a vanilla ice cream or table cream !

My brother works on his exams, I am working on my basics recipes ;)