Tarte Tatin (Upside Down French Apple Tart)

Ingredients:

Instructions:

Place the apples, sugar, salt, lemon juice and zest into a bowl, stir to ensure the ingredients are combined and the apples are well coated in the sugar. Allow to sit for 30mins until the sugar and salt have drawn out the moisture from the apples.
Pour the liquid from the apples and sugar into a 10inch oven proof pan, and cook over medium high heat until the excess liquid evaporates and the sugar turns into a caramel. When the caramel turns into a dark amber brown, stir in your butter and turn off the heat.
Carefully arrange your apples neatly into the pan.
Preheat the oven to 375ºF.
Roll out the flaky pastry dough to a thickness of 2mm and roughly 11-12 inches in diameter. Drape your pastry over the apples and using the back of the spoon, tuck in the excess pastry into the edge of the pan around the apples. Using a fork, prick the pastry all over.
Place your pan into the oven and bake for 45-50mins. Your tart should be ready when the pastry is golden brown, flaky and the apples are cooked through.
When ready to serve, use a plate large enough to cover the pan and invert the tart onto the plate.

Notes:

Be careful when you invert your tart onto the plate as the hot caramel may burn you. If you’re not feeling confident, you can use a large tray to invert the tart from the pan. Afterwards use a pair of spatulas to transfer the tart onto a serving dish/plate.
This is a particularly good recipe during the Fall when apples are season, good quality, and cheap since the bounty is plentiful.
For the apples, you can substitute with another variety of sweet and crisp cooking apple such as Fuji, Braeburn, Honeycrisp, Golden Delicious, etc. You can also substitute the apples with pears. Whatever works for you and is good quality is the best option. I just happened to use Granny Smith in this recipe as they were available and good quality when I was out shopping.
You can modify this recipe by adding a bit of spice such as cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, vanilla, etc to better suit your needs/taste.
A welcome addition to this dish would be a scoop of vanilla ice cream, custard or some whipped cream on top.
You can prepare this tart ahead of time and simply reheat it in the oven at 350ºF for 5-10mins and than invert it onto a plate. However, if you do this you need to leave the tart in the pan, not inverted. The reason being the excess moisture from the apples and caramel will run down towards the pastry making it soggy.