Mini Apple Tarte Tatins

This was a twist on a recipe I’ve been meaning to do for some time. Lately I’ve not been turning out the best stuff- it’s like I’ve lost my mojo. I know, right? How does that happen?? So needless to say I’m not very motivated by lengthy recipe directions. Originally I meant to make an Apple Slab Pie, which was on my menu for the month, but instead I decided to do these cute and easy little tarts.

1 sheet puff pastry

3 apples

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 stick butter, divided

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp cinnamon sugar

Vanilla ice cream, for serving

1. Preheat oven to 375*.

2. Peel, core, and cut apples into 3 rings. Toss with cinnamon sugar and set aside.

3. Roll out thawed pastry sheet and cut into 9 equal squares. Wrap each apple ring.

4. Get skillet over medium heat and put in sugar and 1/2 the butter. Bring to light boil and caramelize into a syrup.

5. Place apples smooth side down into caramel syrup and cook a few minutes.

6. Melt remaining butter and mix with vanilla. Pour evenly over the upsides of the apple tarts (the side where the pastry is folded under).

7. Place whole pan into oven for about 30-45 minutes, or until pastry is golden brown and apples are tender.

8. At this point you could carefully flip each tart over and give it about 10 more minutes in the oven to get some of that caramelized syrup on the top side, or spoon it over the top from the bottom of the pan.

9. Serve top side up where the folds have baked up a little. Serve with ice cream if desired.

This recipe is featured on Full Plate Thursday @ Miz Helen’s Country Cottage! 🙂

Caramel Praline Tart

Did you know that April is National Pecan Month and yesterday was National Pecan Day? In honor of the pecan I’ve decided to share this re-post worthy recipe with you. Make it soon. It’s awesome 🙂

The Home Heart

I’ve been waiting quite some time to be able to share this awesome tart with you. I made one weeks ago, but alas, it fell apart in my fridge, and I was so angry I picked it up in chunks and threw it across my kitchen. I had streaks of sticky caramel and clumps of pralines and pie crust everywhere! It took me two hours to clean my kitchen (I was surprised to see some of the places that caramel got into!) and another hour and half to clean out my refrigerator. The moral to this story is: It may make you feel really good to throw food, but you will have to clean it up, and that doesn’t feel so good.

*Sigh. K, I have to admit, I didn’t care about having to clean it up- throwing it was extremely therapeutic 🙂

Without further ado, I give you an…

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GF French Toast with Caramel Apple Syrup

Remember my Baked Caramel Apples? Well, not only are they great with ice cream but they also go with french toast quite well. I used GF bread for this breakfast but you certainly can use any bread you’d like.

French Toast with Baked Apples

2 slices bread

1 egg

1 T butter

1 tsp sugar

1/2 cup baked caramel apples

Whip the egg and soak the bread in it. You should use up all the egg.

In a skillet, heat up the butter and sugar. Place the bread into the pan and let both sides fry up in the caramelized butter. Reheat your apples and use the caramel sauce from the apples as a syrup. Top the french toast with apples and caramel sauce and a bit of powdered sugar.

It’s that easy. Enjoy!

Baked Caramel Apples with Fried Crust

This turned out to be quite the experiment indeed. Originally I was aiming to make an Apple Tarte Tatin as promised in my March Menu, but that didn’t work out so well due to complications, so I had to improvise and ended up with something very agreeable.

The main problem I had with making the Tartin (I will still attempt that recipe again soon) was that I had no puff pastry in the house and no quick, successful way to make it from scratch. What I did do was attempt to roll out some GF pizza dough into a type of pie crust, but it just wasn’t working for me. So, while the apples were cooking away beautifully, I pan-fried smaller amounts of the GF dough in some butter and sugar.

Baked Caramel Apples

1 stick unsalted butter

2 T butter

1 cup suagr

1 T vanilla*

4-5 apples, peeled and cored, cut in slices

2 tsp cinnamon

Melt the butter in oven proof skillet over medium heat. Sprinkle the sugar evenly over the butter and add the vanilla. *I know 1 tablespoon seems like a lot but it is heavenly.

Cook until the butter and sugar have melted. The sugar should turn a light golden color. Remove from the heat and place your apples and cinnamon into the caramel mixture.; stir them in gently. Place skillet in preheated oven at 375* and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the apples are soft.

If you want to try the fried dough this is what I did: Take small balls (about palm-sized) of the dough and place into small, 5-6 inch frying pan with a bit of butter and a sprinkle of sugar. Using a spatula or high-heat scraper, gently work the dough down into a flat piece that fits the pan.  Fry both sides. The butter and sugar will caramelize the bread.

Cut it up into pieces or any shape you like and serve with the apples. Top with vanilla ice cream and spoon the extra caramel sauce from the pan over it all. Perfect for dessert night! 🙂

Roasted Caramel Pineapple

I recently found a new show to love. It’s called Take Home Chef and it’s on TLC. If you are not familiar with this foodie show it can be summed up in just a few words: Hunky Aussie Cooks Awesome Food.

Actually there’s a little more to it. This guy walks around grocery stores with a camera crew. He spies someone shopping and asks them if they are cooking for someone else and if he can come to their house and do the cooking instead. It’s a pretty neat concept and I can guarantee that if I ever see this guy in my grocery store (highly unlikely but one can dream) I am all over him it.

When I first came across this show I thought I’d just love to listen to the guy’s accent, but wow can he cook! Even my hubby got into a few episodes, and so our dinner that day was conceptualized. I have a few of this guy’s recipes to share, but today is the roasted pineapple 🙂 Slurp!

1 fresh pineapple

6 whole cloves*

1/2 stick butter

1/2 cup sugar

Malibu Rum*

1. Cut the outer skin off your pineapple. If you are not sure how to do this you can google or youtube some instructions, but it’s very easy. The first thing I do is cut off the very bottom and the top. Then working my knife carefully down in strips, cut off the outer skin while working around the entire fruit.

2. Cut the pineapple in half lengthwise, then cut a V into the center of both halves to remove the woody core. Discard everything you’ve just cut off.

3. Turn the two halves over so you’re looking at the outsides. Place about three cloves randomly into some of the holes on each half. *If you don’t have whole cloves, just sprinkle a bit of ground clove onto the surface of each half.

4. Melt your butter in a large saucepan or roasting pan over medium heat on the stove. Make sure this pan can go into the oven. Place the pineapple cut side down into the butter.

5. Let the butter brown a bit. Toss in the sugar and stir it up best you can. You can even us more sugar if needed. *The chef, Curtis Stone, said, “Just throw a handful of sugar in there.” And FYI his hands are big, so it looked like a lot of sugar. Cook a few minutes more but don’t let the sugar or butter burn.

6. Preheat the oven to 400* and place the pan inside to cook down the fruit a little and let the sugar and butter carmalize. *I really don’t know how long it’s suppose to be in there. I left it in about 30 minutes and realized later it could have cooked longer.

7. Remove pan and pour a shot or two of Malibu rum over the top of the pineapples and serve. *Because I was feeding this to my kids I wanted the flavors to mingle more and not taste like alcohol so I put the pineapple back into the oven for a bit after I added the Malibu.

This was delicious but I would definitely try it again. Curtis got such a great, thick caramel syrup under his pineapple and I didn’t- so back to the drawing board I go. Unfortunately this was one of the few recipes from the show that I have been unable to find online. However, you can watch the episode(s) yourself. This one was season 1, episode 4: Natasha. And you can view it via Netflix or even from TLC.com. Enjoy!