Alix K's Apple or Pear Tarte Tatin with Recipe for Pastry Crust

Pastry Crust

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 C flour
• 1 T sugar
• 1/2 C butter (in chunks)
• 6 T cold water

Directions:
Combine dry pastry ingredients, cut in butter. Add water gradually until pastry forms (handle as little as possible). Shape into 5-in.-wide flat circle, wrap, and refrigerate 20 minutes.


Pie Filling

Ingredients:

• 3 flavorful apples or pears (red apples are especially pretty)
• 2 T sugar
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 T butter in 12 pieces (I forgot this part)

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
• On a floured surface, roll out pastry into a rough circle at least 16 in. wide. Fold in half, transfer to a baking sheet, unfold (it will hang over the edges). Refrigerate.
• Wash fruit, do not peel. Quarter, core, and slice each quarter into six slices. 
• Get out pastry, spread fruit over it. (You can just dump the fruit onto the pastry, or to make it pretty, you can pinwheel the overlapping slices, innermost circle facing clockwise, next counterclockwise, etc.)
• Mix sugar and cinnamon, sprinkle over fruit. Top with pieces of butter. Fold edges of pastry up over fruit (will not cover the middle). 
• Bake 20-25 minutes, until crust is golden.

Note: for a fancy touch, you can cover 1/4 C raisins with 1 T of Calvados and warm gently (microwave) to plump the raisins. Sprinkle them, and drizzle any liquid, over the fruit before folding the pastry over (I did this with raisins, dried apples, and dried cherries in whiskey.  Excellent).

Note 2: as you will see from the ingredients, this is not very sweet at all. You can dress it up, of course, with pouring cream or whipped cream or crème anglaise or vanilla ice cream, if desired.