This recipe is inspired by the French apple tarte tatin dessert. The use of store-bought, frozen puff pastry cuts down on prep and makes the dish more approachable.
Peanut, Caramel, & Apple Tart
This recipe is inspired by the French apple tarte tatin dessert. The use of store-bought, frozen puff pastry cuts down on prep and makes the dish more approachable.
Ingredients
- 1 store-bought all-butter puff pastry crust (8oz), thawed
- ¼ cup smooth peanut butter
- 4 Honeycrisp apples, peeled, cored, sliced ¼” thick
- ½ cup+ 2 Tbsp white granulated sugar
- ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- 4 Tbsp water
- ¼ tsp kosher salt
- 5 Tbsp salted butter
- Juice of 1 Lemon
- Vanilla ice cream, to accompany tart
- cup toasted and chopped peanuts
- tsp white granulated sugar
Instructions
- Begin by preparing your puff pastry crust with peanut butter.
- Locate a plate that is slightly larger in size than the 10-12” cast iron pan or oven-safe skillet that you will be baking with later.
- Place the puff pastry crust out on your surface.
- Place the plate on the puff pastry crust and use a knife to cut the puff pastry crust in a circular shape by cutting around the edges of the plate.
- Remove the excess trimmed puff pastry.
- Place ¼ cup peanut butter in microwave safe bowl.
- Heat briefly until the peanut butter is warm and more easily spreadable.
- Spread a thin layer of the peanut butter in the center of the circle of puff pastry, leaving 1” of exterior of the puff pastry without any peanut butter.
- Place the circle of puff pastry in the fridge to allow the peanut butter and crust to cool.
- Preheat oven to 375F.
- In a saute pan, sprinkle the white granulated sugar evenly over the surface of the pan.
- Sprinkle 4 Tbsp water evenly over the top of the sugar.
- Turn the heat to medium low, and patiently wait for your sugar to heat up and turn from white to translucent to golden and amber.
- This whole process can take roughly 10 minutes.
- As the sugar slowly heats, gently swirl the pan (avoid stirring) to encourage even browning.
- When large slow bubbles have formed across the surface of the caramel and you have reached the desired amber color, remove the sugar from the heat.
- Stir in the 5 Tbsp salted butter and ¼ tsp kosher salt until the butter has melted.
- Pour this caramel mixture into the bottom of a well-buttered 10-12” cast iron pan (or stainless-steel oven-proof saute pan with high sides), and distribute caramel evenly across the bottom of the pan.
- Prepare your apples by removing the peel, cutting into quarters, and removing the core from each quarter.
- Slice these remaining cored apple sections into ¼” slices.
- Carefully lay the apples in an overlapping pattern in the saute pan, on top of the caramel.
- Continue to lay the layered apple slices until you have filled up the cast iron or saute pan about 80% of the way full.
- Avoid overfilling the pan at this stage, as it will leak juices during baking if filled too high.
- Remove the peanut butter puff pastry from the fridge.
- Carefully invert the puff pastry that has been spread with peanut butter over the top of your apples.
- Tuck the excess edges of the puff pastry down between the apples and the pan.
- Gently poke holes in the top of the puff pastry with a fork.
- Bake at 375F for 20 minutes.
- While the tart is baking, gently toast the whole peanuts in a small dry saute pan and remove from heat.
- Toss toasted peanuts with 2 tsp white granulated sugar and allow to cool.
- Chop peanuts and reserve for use later as garnish.
- Lower heat in the oven that is cooking the tart to 350F and continue to bake for an additional 20-30 minutes, or until puff pastry crust is perfectly golden-brown on top.
- Remove tart from oven.
- Allow to rest at room temperature for roughly 30 minutes.
- When the tart has cooled, use a knife to loosen the edges of the tart from the saute pan.
- Place a rimmed serving plate that is slightly larger than the saute pan on top of the saute pan, and confidently invert the tarte onto the plate.
- Carefully lift the saute pan off the tart.
- If any of the apples are stuck to the pan after inverting, remove these and place them back on top of the tart.
- Serve with vanilla ice cream and toasted chopped peanuts.
Notes
It helps to keep a baking tray on a rack below the tarte while it bakes, just in case you have any spillage.