French Apple Tarts
You can make these simple tarts quickly and surprisingly easily using a sheet of ready-rolled puff pastry – available in the chiller cabinet of most larger supermarkets. Rolling the pastry even thinner makes more tarts – you should be able to get six from a single sheet. Serve warm with cream, crème fraiche or ice cream.
Ingredients
- 320 g ready-rolled sheet puff pastry
- ½ tbsp plain flour, for rolling
- 2 tbsp apricot jam
- 3 small eating apples (each about 90g)
- 1 tbsp caster sugar
- ½ tsp ground cinnamon
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 220℃/Fan 200℃/Gas 7. Lightly dust your work surface with flour and unroll the pastry onto it. Use a rolling pin to roll out the pastry until it is very thin – around 3mm thick and long enough to cut out 6 x 11cm rounds.
- Use an 11cm plain biscuit cutter, or small saucer as a template, to cut out six pastry discs. Place the discs on a large baking sheet lined with parchment. Brush the centre of each disc thickly with apricot jam using the back of a teaspoon.
- Peel the apples and cut them into quarters. Remove the cores and very thinly slice the apples. Arrange the apple slices in concentric circles on each pastry disc. Mix the sugar and cinnamon together and sprinkle them over the apples.
- Bake for 12-15 minutes or until the pastry is puffed up and golden brown and the apples are tender. Serve warm with cream or crème fraiche if you like.
Notes
Open freeze the cooled, baked tarts until solid. Stack in a rigid freezer-proof container, interleaving them with baking parchment. Reheat from frozen as the recipe for 8-10 minutes.