Not your traditional tarte tatin recipe

Well, this may not look like a traditional tarte tatin, but it sure tastes good. I was making this for a group of 8 friends and I didn't want to be stingy with the servings so I used all of the apples that I purchased. Which I think was about 7 :)

One of the secrets to this recipe is making a deep dark caramel to cook the apples in. Making caramel can be daunting since the temperature of the sugar becomes very hot so it is quite dangerous if you get it on you.

I used a 20 cm round dish (5cm deep). Served 8 people.

Many layered tarte tatin

Dough:
150 grams sifted flour
75 grams cold butter
30 grams sugar
pinch of salt
1 egg

1. Mix the flour and butter together using a pastry cutter or with your fingers. Mix so that the mixture is like fine crumbs.
2. Add in the sugar and egg and continue to mix with the pastry cutter. Put on a pastry board and lightly knead so that it is well mixed.
3. Wrap in plastic and let rest for 30 minutes to 1 hour before using.

Preparing the Apples:
1. Please reduce the number of apples if you need to make less.  I used 7 apples for this recipe.
2. Peel the apples and remove the inner core. Cut in 8 pieces.
3. Make the caramel. Put 80 grams of sugar into a flat frying pan and heat until it turns dark & liquid. Remove from the heat and add 80 grams of butter to the caramel. Put back on a low heat while the butter melts.
4. Add pieces of apple until you fill the pan. Do not overlap the apples too much. Cook the apples on each side in the caramel until they become lightly softened.

Cooking the apples in the caramel

5. Remove apples  as they finish cooking and add new ones.
6. Continue cooking like this until all of the apples are cooked.
7. Pour the leftover caramel into the bottom of the baking ban. Let it cool and remove the butter if you want the dessert to be less rich.

Put the apples on a grill to remove the excess caramel

8. As the apples cooks, place them on a grill so the excess caramel drips into a pan.

9. Prepare the baking pan. As mentioned above, pour the remaining caramel into the bottom of the baking pan. Line the pan with layers of apple - fit the apples together so that the shape is nice.
10. After you finish one or two layers, use a spoon to push down the apples so that they space between them is removed. Keep doing this until the baking pan is filled.
11. Roll out the dough to fit just the top of the baking dish. Add to the top of the apples.
12. Bake at 180 degrees for about 20 - 30 minutes.

13. Take the baking pan out of the oven when finished and let cool for about 10 minutes.
14. Please the baking pan upside down on top of a grill so that the juice can flow out naturally. After about 10 minutes, remove the baking pan.
15. If all goes well, the baking pan will lift off without any apples sticking to it :)
16. Serve with vanilla ice cream if you like.