French apple tart

Obviously I have not posted for several weeks, as I have been traveling in Europe. I am back, and I have new inspiration to make awesome French dishes. To start, I have a belated post from the night we departed for Europe.

I had extra apples from our trip to the orchard, so I saved some to make a French apple tart (from Ina Garten's latest, Back to Basics).

The idea is simple: a layer of pastry dough, then a layer of apples. Cooking is assisted by a bit of butter and sugar atop the apples.


The dough was really easy to make. In fact, it was probably the easiest pastry dough I've ever made. Ina calls for a food processor with a steel blade, but I just use my hand mixer.

I made with Diane's help and got it into the oven by about midnight. Once it finished baking, we went to bed for about two hours until our cab arrived to take us to the airport.


I cut it up and it was a fantastic breakfast - as well as snacks on the airplane and on our first day in London. It's a beautiful and simple tart that I am definitely going to have to make again with all these apples in fall.