“What’s a Tatin?” You may ask. A Tarte Tatin is a kind of cake made “upside down”. Legend has it (I haven’t bothered verifying if it’s true) that two French sisters wanted to cook an apple pie, but they were a bit on the light headed side, and while they prepared the apples beautifully, they forgot to put the actual pie shell in the oven with the apples. Realizing their mistake halfway through, they put some puff pastry on top to try and salvage the pie, and they came up with a very delicious pie. Well, this is but a variation of that. What will we need?

So, we need:

• Apples.
• Quinces.
• Butter/Margarine.
• Sugar.
• Optionally: Lemon, Cinammon, Anything else you may want to put into the caramel we are going to prepare first.
• Not shown: Your favourite kind of pastry (the traditional uses puff pastry, but I use sweet short pastry because I like it :D)

Start with chopping up the quinces and apples:

As you can see, The chunks are nicely chunky, we don’t cut the apple finely like it’s done often in other kinds of apple pies. Notice the pot I’m going to use in the oven, and how the bottom is covered with caramel! The caramel is easy enough to make: Put a cup of sugar or two (depending on the size of your tatin) in a pot with some water, stir until caramelized and browned. Add a couple of drops of lemon juice if you want, or anything else you like putting in homemade caramel.

Now, the important part: Arrange the apples nicely so that you leave as little space as possible, you want them to be tightly packed! Also, add a few nuggets of butter here and there because the apples will need butter to cook properly. Buttery goodness!

Now, preheat the over to 150°C and in the apples go. It’ll take 20-30 minutes until they cook as much as I want them to cook before adding the pastry. Yes, the famous French sisters didn’t notice the missing pastry for like half an hour 🙂

Now, we want to cover it with the pastry. Not just cover it, you have to fold the pastry on the sides so that it’s enveloping the apples nicely. Try to make the apples as evenly flat as possible, and make sure the pastry goes well on the sides to wrap them well!

As you can see, I stabbed the pastry with a fork repeatedly. This way you won’t have steam bubbles forming under the pastry and it will cook evenly. Back into the oven for another 30 minutes or so (it will depend on your particular oven and pastry). I put it to 180°C for the last 10 minutes to cook the pastry well. The result?

We’re almost there! An upside-down pie won’t be much good, will it? We have to flip it! First off, very carefully run a knife on the edge to make sure the pastry isn’t stuck to the oven pot anywhere. Afterwards, put a plate on top and flip it! Shake it and hit it a few times (carefully please) to make sure it has all come off, and you’re done! It’s likely that a few of the quince or apple pieces have stuck to the pot, but they’ll come off easily enough, all you have to do is put them back on the pie and clear the presentation. The pyrex glass pots work quite well for this too.

You can really tell the quince pieces from the apples due to their intense colour. And also you’ll have a bit of quince jelly at the bottom (now the top) to add to the goodyness.

Bon apetit!