Simple Apple Tart (For Your Thanksgiving Consideration)

It's officially getting down to the second most wonderful time of the year. As a young'n I sort of dreaded Thanksgiving: it was soccer tournaments in Vegas, college midterms, and too much turkey as my family came to terms with my now defunct vegetarianism. The holiday never really connoted family either; Fourth of July and Christmas did that and they still do. So three Thanksgivings ago I spread my little wings and went to Pittsburgh to be with my sister and the other "orphans" who couldn't or wouldn't make it home to carve turkeys and eat sweet potato casserole with 'mallows. That year was one of the finest Thanksgivings I've yet to experience, as I buckled down to make six pies while my sister roasted a turkey and made Brussels sprouts so buttery that they could stop your heart (and nearly did two years later, but everyone is fine). It ended with me and two pals breaking into a high-society party, downing a lot of Grey Goose, and ultimately punching each other in the face -- perfect.

And now I love Thanksgiving. It's not that I really hated going home or didn't appreciate the fantastic spread that my mom and dad put together every year, it's just that I've loved writing my own traditions with my sister and our friends. Thanksgiving season is now a two-fold celebration: the first is Kickasserole, our now annual pre-Thanksgiving for friends in DC on the Saturday before folks head for home. Last year saw 45 people arrive with everything from vegan apple pie doughnuts to seitan steaks to the absolutely most decadent macaroni and cheese you'd ever hope to meet. This year we've invited twice as many people, and our community Google doc is showing freeze-distilled applejack, beer soup (vegan!), sweet potato gratin, pumpkin-bourbon ice cream, and my first home brew -- a little IPA that's chugging away under the sink right now. And three days later I'll head out to Pittsburgh for the best of all Thanksgiving celebrations with friends, football, a keg, Gooskis, and a round of Celebrity that I excitedly await every single year.

All that to say that as you're preparing for your own Thanksgiving celebrations and writing your own traditions, think about bringing something ever so slightly new to share! Pumpkin pie ain't for everyone, and it really truly ain't for me, so it's recipes like this apple tart that are what I'm looking for this time of year. It's simple as all hell to make, comes together in no time once you have the crust prepared, and it's light and a little sweet -- a super good finish to a heavy, boozy, sports- and friends-filled meal.

Simple Apple Tart
Adapted from Alice Waters

Crust
Recipe for one crust, any kind you like. I used the second rye pie dough left over from this recipe, but there is also this rye crust and this all-butter pastry, both of which are excellent options. Alice Waters's original recipe calls for an all-butter pastry, but rye is so sweet and nice -- give it a shot if you're able.

Filling + Glaze
2 pounds tart, firm apple, any variety; peeled, cored, and cut into quarter-inch slices (save the peels and cores!)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
5 tablespoons granulated sugar + 1/2 cup granulated sugar for glaze

1.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. On a lightly floured surface, roll out your chilled dough into a 14-inch circle. Gently place into a 9-inch tart pan, or, if making a free-form galette, transfer round to the back of a cookie sheet lined with parchment.

2. Tightly overlap apples all the way to edges if using a pan, or with a two-inch border of crust if making a galette. The size of your apple slices will determine your apple placement. My slices were fairly large so concentric circles weren't possible. I did two simple rows down the middle, then filled in the sides with slices that were cut in half. Fold dough over apples and pleat at intervals.

3.  Brush melted butter all over apples and dough, and sprinkle dough with two tablespoons sugar. Sprinkle remaining three tablespoons of sugar over the apples themselves. Bake in center of oven until apples are soft with dark edges and crust has turned deep golden brown. Rotate every 15 minutes to prevent burning; tart will take about 45 minutes to an hour to bake.

4. Meanwhile make the glaze. Put all of your apple cores and peels and the remaining half-cup of sugar in a pot, add just enough water to cover, and simmer for 30 minutes. Strain syrup. When tart is finished, remove to a cooling rack for at least 15 minutes, then brush the tart with apple glaze and serve.

Maple Buttermilk Pie with Rye Crust

Being from a region of the country wholly nonproximate to the South, I hadn't even heard of buttermilk pie until a few months ago. Bobbie with her sweet tooth was, naturally, responsible for the curiosity after she told me about chess pie, of which I was also unaware but by which I'm now equally intrigued. The two are related, and both seem to be the type of dessert that was made with whatever the ladies of the day had handy in their kitchens. As it were, Crafty Bastards left us with a fair amount of unused buttermilk, and this pie was a perfect cool-weather solution on a weekend saturated with the most excellent visitors.

For the skeptics and the west coasters, buttermilk pie comes out of the oven with a lightly caramelized top and a sweet, thick, custardy inside. The maple in this version -- that I gather is nontraditional -- complemented the caramelization, and the whole thing tasted a bit like tangy dulce de leche. It's a little ugly and a little stunning and wholly deserving of your leftover (or new!) buttermilk.

Maple Buttermilk Pie with Rye Crust
Adapted from 101Cookbooks

Crust
Makes enough for one double-crust or two single-crust pies.
I doubled the salt and added sugar. How predictable!

Scant 2/3 cup rye flour (75 g.)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1.5 teaspoons granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
8 oz. (two sticks) unsalted butter, very cold and cut into half-inch pieces
1/4 to 1/2 cup very cold beer (!!!) or water, or slightly more (amount will depend on the weather; I used 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon beer)

1. Put the flours, sugar, and sea salt in the bowl of your food processor (or in a bowl if you don't have a processor). Pulse once to mix and sprinkle with little cubes of butter. Using short pulses (or a pastry blender), mix the butter into the flour until the crumbs range in size from large peas to oatmeal.

2. Turn the flour mixture out into a large shallow bowl. Drizzle 1/4 cup of the liquid over the flour-butter mix and cut through it with a rubber spatula to blend. If the mixture still looks dry, add more liquid one tablespoon at a time until it's pretty shaggy and holds cohesive when you squeeze it together. Divide dough into two equal pieces, wrap each in plastic wrap, flatten slightly, and refrigerate for at least one hour before rolling.

3. If you only need one crust for now, triple wrap the second in plastic and freeze for up to a week. Or! Make two pies. Rye crust is delicious with just about any filling. You could also halve the recipe, or check the archives for a different crust if you can't halve weights.

Filling
1 teaspoon lemon zest
2 tablespoons golden brown sugar
6 egg yolks
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cup real maple syrup (pref. grade B)
2 cups buttermilk (pref. whole fat)
1 teaspoon vanilla
scant 1/2 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
large-grain sugar for sprinkling

1. Preheat oven to 375 F with a rack in the bottom third. Roll out one hunk of the pie dough hunks on a lightly floured surface into a 12-inch round. Guide it into a 9-inch pie dish, and trim the crust so that there is a one-inch overhang. Tuck the overhang under itself, then flute it with your fingers or crimp with a fork. Prick the bottom of the crust with a fork a bunch of times. Line the bottom and sides with one large piece of parchment or buttered foil and fill with pie weights or dried beans. Bake for 20 minutes, remove the weights and parchment, and bake for 10 minutes more until golden. Allow crust to cool as long as possible.

2.  Now mix the filling! In a large bowl, whisk the lemon zest, brown sugar, yolks, and flour until mixture is free of lumps. Slowly add the maple syrup, whisking, then the buttermilk, vanilla, and sea salt.

3. Dial the oven down to 325 F. Put cooled crust (or cooled-ish) on baking pan lined with foil, and pour the mixture into the shell. Bake until filling is somewhat firm around the edges and set in the center, about one hour. Filling will puff up like a crazy souffle then deflate as it cools. Allow pie to cool on a rack, sprinkle with large-grain sugar, and enjoy! Ours was finish in 24 hours, but we did leave it covered on the counter to great success during that time. If you're keeping it out for longer than a day, cover with plastic and put in the fridge.

Tarts by Tarts at the Crafty Bastards Fair!

Photo by Emily!

Hot damn, blog blackout. Last I wrote, I was in the thick of summer and hardly baking a lick because of the swampy outdoors and sweltering indoors. It was a rollicking good summer with trips to Maine, California, and Pittsburgh and time spent in Baltimore, but fall is the g.d. best and what better way to kick it off than with a new business adventure!

Only the essentials y'all 

In July, some amazing ladies and a wonderful fella moved into our house in DC, and one of these gals happens to be a killer baker with a pie forte. And in September, the Washington City Paper announced that this year's ginormous Crafty Bastards Arts and Crafts Fair would feature an "indie food market." Kismet! In years past, Crafty Bastards hasn't had much food, particularly not much local and independent food, so we quick-quick planned and wrote our application to represent. Thus was born Tarts by Tarts, our bakery ode to butter, bourbon, and New England.

 Doughnuts stuffed with dulce de leche, savory apple tart, chocolate cookies, and apple-apple butter tartlets

Following nightly prep of business cards bunting, the day before the fair had us up and at 'em early with a breakfast of fried green tomato croque mesdames (holler!) and a last-minute grocery trip to purchase deep-fry oil and a boatload of sugar. Twenty-two hours of baking, two hours of sleep, and 15 pounds of flour later, we had churned out dulce-de-leche-stuffed doughnuts, apple cider doughnuts, chocolate- and vanilla-glazed buttermilk cake doughnuts, molasses gingerbread, pumpkin whoopie pies, a savory apple-onion-gruyere tart, double chocolate cookies, vegan iced oatmeal cookies, apple tartlets, honey walnut tartlets, and plum hazelnut tartlets—about 200 individual baked goods all told.

Emily, tartin' it up

And we sold out! After a rewarding though rainy and freezing four hours, Tarts by Tarts sold its last cookie and packed its many bags for home where hot toddies were flowing and nap time was calling. The marathon baking and fair had me tiptoeing the precipice of insanity, but in the end we had a bang-up time and are really looking forward to plotting our next appearance. Doughnut cart? Farmstand? Pop-up bakeshops? Thanks to everyone who came out to support, or helped us out with tents, cars, 3:00 a.m. company, and more! We're only just getting 'Tarted (hah).

Apricot Blackberry Tart with Rye Crust

Warning y'all, I'm in a Law & Order SVU k-hole. It comes after an abnormally demanding couple of days at my job and just before the onslaught of six straight 17-hour work days i.e., my organization's annual conference. I'm spending my last few hours of respite thinking about pie and cocktails and watching a ten-year-old sociopath terrorize a father played by Agent Cooper. Joey and I (but mostly I) had a bad habit of watching probably six episodes of SVU at a time until Joey moved to Argyle and left me here to watch SVU on my ownsome while feeding a fear of our basement (total serial killer hideout!).  

Well and so this tart. Joey successfully unleashed me from SVU's stranglehold last weekend when he came down to DC for a quick, two-night visit. We traipsed from one quadrant of DC to another, exclusively for gluttonous, double dinners and cocktails, and especially for ramen (at Toki Underground -- you have to go!) and for friends (they are the best!). And suddenly it was 2 a.m. on Saturday night when I realized that I hadn't baked the second of two of these tarts yet and that Joey was leaving at the crack of Sunday dawn. So we slept some, baked the tart, ate it, and kissed faretheewell until next time. But before Joey got on his train, he did declare this tart to be "it," and I think it almost worked magic in getting him to come back forever.

And anyway, this recipe makes two jammy, flaky, sweet, and tart tarts in what Kimberly Boyce calls a crust made “sweet and milky” by the use of rye flour. She recommends the tart dough for any fruit, particularly apricots and boysenberries together, and while my farmers market is woefully short on boysenberries, we have an abundance of blackberries and soon enough plums. Pears too. And I am officially hooked on Boyce’s palate. I mean, after her rhubarb tarts, whole-wheat chocolate chip cookies, iced oatmeal cookies, honey amaranth cookies, multigrain pear pancakes, quinoa cookies, and ginger peach muffins, I sorta already was. Definitely pick up a copy of her cookbook. It will blow your mind.

Apricot Blackberry Tart with Rye Crust                 

Adapted from Kim Boyce’s recipe for Apricot Boysenberry Tart

Makes two tarts

Boyce's recipe calls for homemade jam so I cut back the amount used since I was suspicious of how sweet commercial jam would be. I've noted below where my take strays from hers.

For rye dough
1 cup rye flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 ½ sticks cold unsalted butter
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
Ice water

1.  Sift the flours, sugar, and salt into a large bowl, dumping any grains that remain in the sifter back into the bowl. Cut the butter into half-inch pieces and add to the mixture. Rub the butter between your fingers to break it into smaller bits, until the butter ranges in size from hazelnuts to peas; work quickly!

2.  Add the vinegar and eight tablespoons of ice water to the mixture, using a rubber spatula or your hands to cut the liquid through the dry ingredients. The dough should come together as one shaggy lump. Squeeze it together to see if a ball forms, and if it’s too dry, add more water one tablespoon at a time until dough comes together. Pile the dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap, sprinkle with a few dots of water, wrap, and refrigerate for at least an hour or overnight.

3.   (This next bit is a tad technical, but folding and rolling the dough like this creates seriously flaky layers of pastry.) Unwrap the dough on a floured surface and pat it into square. Roll it out to a rectangle that’s roughly 8 ½ by 11 inches. The dough will be crumbly, but fear not! It will come together. For the first turn, fold the dough in thirds like a letter; the seam should be on the left. Rotate the dough so that the seam is at the top and parallel to your body, and roll out into an 8 ½ by 11 rectangle again. Fold and roll again, and repeat the process for a third, final time. Wrap the dough in plastic and chill for another hour.

For filling and finishing

1 ¼ cup apricot jam (suspecting sweetness, I cut this back to 1 cup total)

2 pounds ripe apricots

2 to 4 tablespoons sugar, depending on sweetness of fruit

1 ½ cups boysenberries (I used blackberries)

1 egg

¼ cup raw sugar

½ teaspoon cinnamon

1.  Cut the apricots in half, discard the pits, and toss the halves into a large bowl. Add the sugar and toss to coat. Gently stir 1/2 cup of jam into apricots; each piece of fruit should be lightly coated with jam.  In a separate bowl, toss the berries with another ¼ cup of jam, careful to keep the berries whole.

2.  To shape dough, divide it in half and keep the second half in the fridge while you work. Roll your dough on a lightly floured surface into a 15-inch circle. Transfer the circle to the back of a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

3.  To assemble tart, smear ¼ cup of jam (I halved this and used two tablespoons) across the crust. Pile on half the apricots and half the blackberries, tucking berries into the nooks. Working from the edges, fold the crust into the center, pleating as needed; there should be about three inches of crust showing.  Using the same procedure, make the second tart.  Freeze both tarts for at least an hour.

4.  Meanwhile preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Whisk your egg with a splash of water until no streaks remain, and brush the tops of crusts with it.  Mix the cinnamon and sugar in a small bowl, and toss it generously and evenly over both tarts. Bake tarts for 60 to 70 minutes, rotating pan halfway through, until crust is deep golden brown and filling is bubbling. If you only want to make one, keep the second unbaked tart wrapped in the freezer for up to one month.

Summer Peach Pie

Summer, y'all. The season sticks around like molasses in the mid-Atlantic, but the produce disappears from week to week. My farmer said on Saturday that the window for apricots is going to be three weeks this year, and sour cherries were around for just two, so we had best be on our pit fruits wits! In the meantime, there's work to skip and quarries to swim, and two weeks ago I went way up north to visit Joey in his new tiny town of Argyle, New York, just a heartbeat away from the Adirondacks and around the corner from a killing of farmstand doughnuts.

There was also the blow-out bulgogi BBQ curated by my whipsmart, hilarious, and visiting big sister, and in the past two weeks there has been a series of roaring summer storms that have ripped through the city while we watch from the porch with beers like how our mom does. The dance parties have been supremely sweaty and the karaoke extra romantic, and every weekend someone is rattling off the names of beaches to infiltrate (side note: dudes, let's go). By the time fall rolls around (in like, December), I'm usually so tired of summer that I could just spit, but this year has felt a little more urgent, a little more important.

I'm not trying to get sick of summer anytime soon, which brings us back to pit fruit. And this peach pie. And last weekend when we sat in the kitchen hungover watching the Kennedys miniseries (it's just the worst!), and it was all I could do to make three fruit pies and pay homage to summer in my inside, Sunday way too. Guys, this pie is so rad, and you have to make it. 

Summer Peach Pie

Blind baking fruit pies is awesome because it prevents the bottom crust from getting soggy. You don't have to do it, but I totally love that there is a way to guarantee crispy crust on both sides. If you don't want to go to the trouble, put the bottom dough in unbaked, fill it, top it with the top crust, freeze for 45 minutes, then do the egg wash, and bake away as directed below.

1 recipe all-butter flaky pie dough (instructions and ingredients over here!)

4 pounds ripe peaches

1/3 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

2  tablespoons tapioca flour or cornstarch

1 tablespoon unsalted butter, cut into little pieces

2 tablespoons raw sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1.  After your pie crust has done its requisite one-hour stint in the fridge, preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Roll out one-half of the crust to a 12-inch circle, and fit into a nine-inch standard pie pan. Trim the overhang to a half-inch all around, fold the edges of the dough under, and crimp. Place a piece of foil shiny side down onto the crust, fill with pie weights or dried beans, and bake for 25 minutes. Remove foil and bake for five to ten minutes more, until crust is lightly golden brown; let crust cool while you carry on. Turn oven down to 375 degrees for the pie.

2.  Meanwhile, blanch and peel your peaches. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Cut an X into the bottom of each peach, and boil three or four at a time for 15 seconds (if your peaches aren't utterly ripe, you may need to go to 20 or 25 to more easily remove the skins; test one peach to find out). With a slotted spoon, remove peaches to a big bowl. Continue to blanch peaches in rounds, bringing water to a full boil between each set. Then, starting at the Xs, press, slide, and peel the fuzzy skins off; cut peeled peaches into one-inch slices and toss into a large bowl.

3.  Mix the sugar and vanilla into the peaches and allow to macerate for about 30 minutes. Drain a little of the resulting peach juice into a small bowl, and whisk the tapioca flour into it to dissolve. Then toss the flour and juice back into the bowl of peaches; stir to combine. 

4.  Mound your filling into the baked bottom pie crust. Roll out the top crust to a 12-inch circle, and follow these instructions if you want to make a lattice top. Since the bottom crust is baked, you'll need to tuck the edges of the lattice strips under themselves instead of under the lip of the bottom crust; no big deal! Mix the cinnamon and sugar together in a little bowl, whisk the egg to oblivion and brush the top of your crust with it, then cover it with the cinnamon and sugar mixture. Put pie on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, and bake for one hour, or until filling is bubbling and crust is deep golden brown.