Brendan Bake Off's Tarte Tatin

I recently received an email asking a very simple question. Do I like Tarte Tatin? I cast my mind back several years and remembered enjoying a slice of one once in a French Bistro with Disneyboi. I replied in the affirmative.

The response then came back, asking if I would like to make one for a company – Titan Travel who have a monthly supper club feature on their travel website. The recipe, which was recently featured on Titan Travel, comes courtesy of Brendan from last years Great British Bake Off. I again replied in the affirmative and set about making this classic French dessert.

Brendan’s recipe uses a rough puff pastry, and having recently made regular puff pastry, I was interested to see what the difference was. It wasn’t too different and really was just a case of rubbing cubes of butter into flour, rather than making a parcel of dough to encase the butter.

Anyhoo, I used 14 apples as instructed, grated the ginger (which seemed like a heck of a lot) and dusted off my old glass quiche dish. I didn’t have a recommended tarte tin and thought this might work just as well.

I made my caramel in a pot which I poured into the dish, rather than making it straight in the suggested tin. I layered the cored and peeled apples and sprinkled on my powerful gingery sugar mix and almost popped it into the oven. But then I noticed there was no temperature! Brendan just says a hot oven – what was this?  A GBBO Technical Challenge?? Well I thought 250^oC would be a tad too hot, so I plumped for the universal temperature of 180^oC. I baked the apples for 25 minutes, then added the pastry circle and baked for a further 30 minutes. I also placed a cookie sheet under the dish, I should say, as I knew this would get messy.

The baked tarte was placed on a wire rack for the allotted 15 minutes, and then inverted onto a serving plate. The edges seemed to stick a bit and broke off from the tarte. I put this down to using a glass dish, but it looked okay and kind of rustic.

I had a wee slither almost right away, as it smelled too good not too. Despite being very hot, it was also very delicious and the amount of ginger used certainly gave it a fiery kick. If you are not a huge fan of ginger I would highly recommend using less – 100 grams was a lot.

So, I have now made rough puff and Tarte Tatin. At this rate, I might start considering myself a half-decent baker!

If you’d like the full recipe, pop over to Titan TravelsSupper Club. And thank you to them for asking me to take part. Jouir de!

Disclosure Statement – I was not paid to write the post. I received payment to purchase the required ingredients. Any views expressed are my own.