Caramel Apple Tart

Bridget at Bake at 350 has started a new blog carnival! It's called Flavor of the Month and this month's theme is pie!

I'm really excited about this particular theme because I missed out doing the Beauty Baker assignment of French Apple Tart. Also, my wonderful mother-in-law bought me a slew of fancy salt when we were at Pike's Place during her visit and I've been dying to make some salted caramel. So, all these things have converged to produce this. . . .

Caramel Apple Tart
adapted from Baking with Julia


one recipe of your favorite pie crust dough

Filling:
6 Granny Smith apples
3/4 cup of sugar
1 tablespoon of flour
pinch of cinnamon
1/2 cup fresh, fluffy bread crumbs
2 teaspoons lemon juice

Caramel:
1/4 cup of butter (half a stick)
1 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of cream
1-2 teaspoons (depending on taste) sea salt or kosher salt (I used Fleur de Sel)

Topping:
2-3 Granny Smith apples
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 1/2 teaspoons granulated sugar
sea salt for sprinkling


On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough into a circle about 1/8 inch thick and fit it into a 9 inch tart pan.
Chill the crust at least 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Put a piece of parchment inside the tart crust and fill it with dried beans.

Bake for 25 minutes, remove to a cooling rack and lower the oven temp to 325.
Meanwhile, make the filling: peel and core the apples, cut each in half and then cut each half into 12 slices. (these don't need to be pretty)
Toss in a large bowl with the sugar, flour, cinnamon and bread crumbs and a squeeze of lemon juice.
Spread apple mixture onto a sheet pan and bake for 15-20 minutes, until apples are soft and are giving up their juices.
Meanwhile, make the caramel: melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.
Stir in the sugar and cook until it turns a dark, golden brown.
Add the cream and stir briskly, avoiding any spatter.
Pass through a strainer and reserve.
When the apples are ready transfer them to a bowl and mash with a potato masher.
Taste and add more lemon if it needs it and cool the filling for 15 minutes.
Spoon filling into tart and smooth with a spatula. The filling should be slightly below the rim. (to leave room for the apples that go on top.
Layer some of the caramel on top of the apples.
For the topping: Peel and core the apples. Slice them, as neatly as you can, into 1/4 inch slices.
Toss them in a bowl with the lemon juice as you work to keep them pretty.
Arrange the apples over the top of the caramel, brush with the melted butter and sprinkle with sugar.
Bake on a sheet pan for 25-30 minutes, until the top is glazed and the apples are done.
Drizzle more caramel over the top and sprinkle with sea salt.
Serve warm or at room temperature.
Enjoy!

Thanks for stopping by! Now head on over to Bridget's blog to see all the other yummy pies!

Yeah, Baby!

The voting for Iron Cupcake:Summer Berries is open! Yipes! Only two more days left! My two cupcakes (Strawberry Balsamic and Alien Blueberry) are about half way down the page. The voting box is on the right hand side of the page. I will love you forever if you click here and go vote for me!!!


This week's Baking Beauties assignment was Hazelnut Mini Loaves. I'm kinda glad I was home by myself when I made these. (If you don't count the three napping kidlets!) My reaction to them would have been really embarrassing had there actually been other people around. Oh. My. God. That cake was amazing. So much so that after I inhaled ate one, I immediately wrapped up the other cooled cakes and froze them. Sweet, light, subtly nutty, a smidge salty and the cream? Oooohhhhh. YUM! This picture was taken before I had actually tasted it. After I licked the spoon I had to get another one out so I could scoop another HEAPING blob on top. Yum, yum, YUM!

Hazelnut Baby Cake with Chambord Cream

Apparently I can't multitask in the kitchen anymore. Not while I'm on the phone, anyway. I was talking to my mom when I was getting started on this recipe. I wasn't thinking and I whisked the sugar into the dry ingredients. Crap. You're supposed to cream the butter and sugar. Looking at the recipe it actually looked like the same dry ingredient list as for my pancakes. So I adjusted it to match better and poured it into a bag. Tomorrow I'll see if I can get hazelnut pancakes out of it!

I've been making a lot of zucchini bread and am mini-loafed out. So I decided to use my pretty flower baby-cake pan instead. I have not had good luck with this thing in the past. I've Pammed it, butter and floured it, oiled it, etc, etc, etc. The ridges on the flowers always stick and rip off, and if you frost them you lose all the detail. This time I used Baker's Joy to spray them down. Sold! That stuff is awesome! The baby-cakes popped right out of the pan and I didn't lose any detail!

Oh, and marscarpone! Where have you been all my life??

Note: don't bother peeling the hazelnuts. I skipped that step and I don't think it would make much difference. It didn't taste bitter or anything.

Hazelnut Baby Cakes
Adapted from Baking with Julia

Made 6 baby-cakes or mini loaves. (Probably a dozen cupcakes)

For the cream: 3/4 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons sugar
3/4 cup marscarpone
1 teaspoon grappa (I used Chambord)

For the baby-cakes: 1/3 cup hazelnuts, peeled
1 cup of sugar
1 2/3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt (I liked it, but this was almost too much salt, so if you don't much like salt you might want to just use 1/2 teaspoon.)
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 cup creme fraiche (make your own by mixing up 1 cup heavy cream and 1 tablespoon buttermilk, and leave it on the counter overnight or until thickened.)
1 stick butter, room temperature
2 eggs, room temperature

Preheat the oven to 350. Prepare pans. (with Baker's Joy!!!)
In a food processer, buzz the hazelnuts with one tablespoon of the sugar. Process until nuts are fine. (Go slow so you don't end up with hazelnut butter!)
In a medium bowl, whisk together the ground nuts, flour, baking powder and salt.
In a small bowl, stir together the creme fraiche and almond extract.
In your mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.
Add a third of the flour and mix until just together.
Add half the creme fraiche until just mixed.
Repeat with remaining flour and creme fraiche.
Divide batter between pans and bake about 30 minutes, or until golden and delicious.
Immediately turn out onto cooling rack.
Enjoy with a dollop of cream. (Either serve them all or immediately freeze the rest so you don't eat them!)

While cakes are baking, whip the cream and sugar into soft peaks.
In a medium bowl, gently stir the Chambord into the marscarpone.
Fold the whipped cream into the marscarpone.
Dollop onto baby-cakes.

I don't know why I'm asking this, but you've already voted, right?? I'm just 12 votes behind the leader! The winner is picked by random drawing, but I'd love to be able to say I had the most votes the first time I participated :)

Fruit Focaccia

First things first. The voting for Iron Cupcake:Summer Berries is now open! My two cupcakes (Strawberry Balsamic and Alien Blueberry) are about half way down the page. The voting box is on the right hand side of the page. I will love you forever if you click here and go vote for me!!!

The Baking Beauties recipe this week was Fruit Focaccia. Normally I love focaccia, but this just didn't do much for me. I mean, it was good, and it came out great, I was just not a huge fan of the flavor. Like a fruitcake flavored focaccia. I mean, what did I expect really, I put 4 different kinds of dried fruit in it. Surprise, surprise, my favorite part of the focaccia was the crunchy turbinado sugar sprinkled over the top!

Fruit Focaccia
Adapted from Baking with Julia

4 ounces dried cranberries
4 ounces golden raisins
4 ounces dried tart cherries
4 ounces currants
3 1/2 cups hot water
3 3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
5 teaspoons active dry yeast
1/4 cup honey
2 tablespoons grated orange zest
2 tablespoons butter, cut into pieces, at room temperature

1 egg yolk, beaten with 2 tablespoons cream, for glaze
turbinado sugar, for topping

Put the dried fruit in a large bowl and cover with the hot water.
Cover the bowl with saran wrap and allow to macerate at room temperature for at least 3 hours.
Drain the fruit in a collander, squeezing out as much liquid as possible.
Reserve 1 1/4 cups of juice.
Put 1/4 of reserved juice in your mixer bowl, add the yeast and whisk to combine.
Let sit until creamy, about 5 minutes.
Stir in the rest of the juice, the honey and the orange zest.
Stir the salt into the flour and add about half the mixture to the wet ingredients.
Mix on low to incorporate, then add the rest of the flour.
After the rest is incorporated increase the speed to medium and let mix approximately 10 minutes, until dough is smooth and shiny.
Turn the mixer down to medium-low and add butter bit by bit.
Increase speed to medium and beat for 3-5 minutes, until dough comes back together.
Add the macerated fruit in 2 batches.
The dough will break and look awful. Keep faith and it will come back together in about 5 minutes.
Scrape the dough into a buttered bowl and let rest at room temperature for 3-3 1/2 hours.
After the 3 hours, stir the dough back down and cover again with wrap. Chill for 24 hours in fridge.
Fit the bottom of a jelly-roll pan with parchment, butter the paper and sides of the pan.
Turn the chilled dough onto a lightly floured surface, flour the top of the dough and gently roll, pull and stretch the dough into a rectangle the size of your baking pan.
Lift the dough as you work to dust with additional flour to keep dough from sticking. Lightly butter a piece of saran wrap and place it over the dough.
Let the dough come to room temperature and start to rise. It should take about 3 hours. It's ready when it feels spongy to the touch.
Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Brush the dough with the egg glaze and sprinkle with sugar.
Bake for 25-30 minutes or until top is deep, golden brown.

My friend Claudia has this awesome dip recipe I thought would be great with this. I liked the focaccia much better after it was dunked in this creamy awesomeness!

Claudia's Vanilla Dip

1 box instant vanilla pudding
1 cup milk
1 cup cream
2 cups sour cream

Pour the milk and cream into a medium bowl.
Whisk in the pudding mix.
Fold in the sour cream.
Enjoy!

Just a gentle reminder. . . . did you go vote??

Baking Beauties!

So, I joined this baking club called Baking Beauties because they are baking their way through Baking with Julia, which my mom got for me a couple of years ago and I've loved! Well, I loved the handful of recipes I tried until I got to the Challah and I haven't loved any more because I can't bring myself to try any of the other recipes. That bread is the only bread worth baking anymore! With half a cup of butter and 4 eggs and a heap of sugar it's no wonder it's a favorite around here. When I saw what these ladies were doing I had to bully my way in, if only for an excuse/motivation to get to that genoise that I've been wanting to try but keep coming up with excuses to pass on.

I really wanted to make the French Apple Tart last week but that was when my camera decided to poop out on me so I didn't make it. Seemed such a waste to go to all the effort to slice those apples up all pretty if no one (outside the family, of course) was going to see it.

Anyway, this week's recipe is Cantuccini, courtesy of Nick Malgieri. I thought these had a really wonderful 'homey' flavor and they really were a breeze to put together.

Getting Ingredients Together

Huh. A Pile of Crumbs.

Oh Wait. It Came Right Together!

After First Baking.

Of course, then I had to run to the grocery store. (for some quick Father's Day shopping!) Which actually worked out nicely since these took a heck of a lot longer to cool than the 30 minutes the recipe said. When I got home I sliced them up and baked them another 15 minutes. They were so YUMMY!

Cantuccini
From: Baking with Julia

2 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups unblanched whole almonds
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350. Line a baking sheet with parchment and set aside. (Seriously, use the parchment. You'll be using it to transfer the logs to a cooling rack and it's WAY easier than trying to move them with spatulas.)
In a large bowl (or mixer), whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.
Stir in almonds.
In a small bowl, whisk together eggs and vanilla.
Stir into flour mixture. (The dough will be dry at this point, but it will come together when you start kneading it.)
Turn dough out onto lightly floured surface and knead until smooth, 1-2 minutes.
Divide dough in half and shape each loaf into a 12 inch long log.
Gently press down to flatten logs until they are about 2 inches wide and an inch high.
Set them on prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes.
Use the parchment to slide the logs onto cooling racks.
Cool for at least 30 minutes.
Cut with a serrated knife, on the bias, into 1/4 inch thick slices. (I went with about 1/2 inch slices. Easier to manipulate.)
Place sliced cookies on baking sheet and bake for another 10 to 15 minutes, until golden and delicious. Cool on the pan.
Enjoy!

Happy Father's Day, Honey! I hope you enjoy the carb-induced coma I have in store for you!