Welcome to a first for dippolicious. That's right followers, a special guest post from yours truly - because some of us bake better than your regular contributor! Now, I must admit that this is not my own recipe but taken from one of my most favourite chefs, Monsieur Raymond Blanc, whose mother actually taught him how to cook this.
So in honour of Maman Blanc, the key stages of the recipe have been put together in a short video (Flixlab is an awesome app - get it if you haven't already and your photos will take on a whole new lease of life):
But remaining true to the dippolicious style, and so you can make it yourself, scroll down...
For the pastry you will need:
250g plain flour
125g butter at room temperature
1 pinch sea salt
1 egg
And for the filling:
3 or 4 apples - Cox, Worcester or Braeburn (the best) just not Granny smith if you can help it
15g melted butter
Half a tbsp of lemon juice
15g caster suger
Half a tbsp of Calvados (this is optional but SO worth it)
Icing sugar to dust
Start with the pastry, your apples will go brown if you cut them too early. Rub together the butter, flour and salt with your fingertips until you have a breadcrumb type texture, then create a well in the middle and add the egg. Work the egg into the mixture and make a ball, then knead it with the palms of your hands for about 30 seconds. Wrap it in cling film, flatten it to 2cm thickness and put it in the fridge (it makes it easier to work with when you come to rolling it out).
Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C and slide in a baking tray. Now you can start on the apples - peel and core them before cutting them into rings, and if you can get hold of one use a mandoline (not of the muscial variety!) to get an even thickness on your apples. Set it to about 3mm and slice away! So easy, but be careful if you're using a knife - you might want to cut into segments first and use half circles instead for your filling. At this stage melt the butter in a small pan, add the sugar, lemon juice and Calvados - you'll use this to glaze the apples in the tart tin.
Set your apples to one side, a squeeze of lemon juice over them will help keep their colour, and take your pastry out of the fridge. Spread a new piece of cling film on the work surface and unwrap the 2cm thick pastry and cover it with another (!) piece of cling film. Roll out the pastry to 2mm sandwiched between the two layers - it sounds like a lot of cling film but it means you don't dry out the pastry with extra flour and it helps when you come to lining the tin.
Still with me? Good. Remove a layer of cling film (you don't want this going into the oven) and line an 18cm diameter tart tin with the pastry. Push it into the sides of the tin, remove the cling film, trim the edges and pinch the sides up 2mm above the edge, not forgetting to prick the base. Now add your apples by laying them in a circular fan shape around the base of the pastry case. Build them up and fill in the gaps with spare segments so you have a packed tart tin. Brush them with the Calvados glaze, dust with icing sugar and put in the oven on the baking tray.
After 10 minutes, turn down to 200 degrees and cook for another 20 minutes to caramelise the apples and turn your pastry a golden brown colour. You can eat it like this but I prefer to finish with a custard topping - simply mix 1 egg with 100ml of cream and 50g caster sugar then pour over the top and bake for another 10 mins.
Delightfully tilleylicious x
