Autumn Apple Tart Recipe

An autumn apple tart, the perfect end to a Sunday lunch.

Have you still got apples from the garden to use up? This apple tart is an easy to make, light and tasty dessert.

As autumn sets in, we start bringing out our throws for the sofas and the heating is back on, I naturally start to focus on comforting and nurturing meals.

We have started to make hot Sunday lunches again, enjoying a cosy family meal together. With an abundance of apples and pears from our garden I am keen to use them in different and interesting ways.

I often use puff pastry for both savoury and sweet dishes as it is so quick and versatile. This version of an apple tart came from watching my son Alfie, who had been using a Mandoline to make apple crisps. I decided to slice up more apples to use on top of the pastry for our dessert. Apples always pair beautifully with cinnamon and the lemon juice stops it from being too sickly sweet. It was a tasty treat, and the perfect end to our meal.

Ingredients:

4-5 apples (eating)

1 ready made puff pastry 

1 egg (egg wash)

60 grams caster sugar

2 tsp cinnamon powder

Juice of a lemon

2 tsp Vanilla paste

6 tbsp jam, I used crab apple jelly but you could use something similar like apricot jam

Preheat oven to 160ºC

Cooking time:

10 mins pastry base, 15 mins with the topping.

Recipe: 

Begin by laying your ready rolled puff pastry onto a baking sheet with non stick paper. Gently score around the edge of the rectangle shape to make a 1cm border, adding extra scores across the main area. Egg wash the whole pastry and put in the oven for 10 mins to cook to a lightly golden colour.

Get a small bowl and mix together the vanilla paste, cinnamon powder, sugar and lemon juice.

Once the pastry has cooled, spoon half of the paste over the pastry and spread evenly across.

Next finely slice the apples into circles keeping the skin on, I used a mandoline slicer for ease, keep all the small pieces to fill in any gaps and pick out any unwanted pips.

Evenly layer the apple slices across the base generously overlapping. 

Spread the rest of the cinnamon mixture over all of the apples with a pastry brush (If you don't have enough mixture to cover all the apples you can quickly make up more).

Finally, generously spread over all the the apples with the jam of choice, making sure you get in all the spaces. I also thinly coated the pastry edges for extra crispness.

Pop the tart back in the oven for another 15 minutes to cook the apples through and give a golden finish.

Serve with custard or cream.

Yummy.

Enjoy baking!