Their picture of a French Apple Tart

The November/December 2014 Cook's Illustrated had a French Apple Tart recipe. Four hours later, on a Sunday afternoon, I had produced a version. This, for me, is special occasion fare. It's simple, delicious and beautiful with their recipe.

So, for future reference* -

13.32 oz. AP Flour

   4.5  oz  Sugar (I used my home-made vanilla sugar.)

     1   tsp  Salt

 20     T.   Melted unsalted Butter

Preheat oven to 350.  Mix the dry ingredients.  Pour in the melted butter, and mix until Play-Dough-ish.  Skip the wrapping and chilling and rolling, and just pat it in the pan.  Try to be consistent about the thickness, and especially the joint area between the bottom and the sides.  They suggest using a meat pounder.  I just used my hands and it worked pretty well. Author Andrea Geary suggested putting the crust on a baking pan with a wire rack on it, and using the bottom rack.  I followed her suggestion, and it came out beautifully ! (30-35 minutes, rotating once half-way, removing when golden brown...)  Her tests indicated that you can make all of these components up to 24 hours ahead of time, assembling at the last minute.  Keep the two apple components separated.

For the "top" apples - in skillet over medium heat, add 2 T. butter until foaming.  Add sliced apples  and water.  Cover and cook 3-5 minutes, then spread out to cool. (reserve 5 skinniest ones to make the rosette curve in the middle)

For the "bottom" apples, get Smucker's Apricot Preserves.  Microwave gently until fluid.  Using a wire mesh, separate solids and save them.  Reserve about 3 T. to coat top later.  Add apples with butter, apricot solids and strained Preserves.  Cook and cover about 10 minutes, over medium heat.  Break them down.  A potato masher works great here (after I found it).  The pastry blender worked pretty well until then. !?  Dry them out more, about 5 minutes.

Smooth them into the crust.  Top with the slices.  Cook for about 30 minutes on lowest rack.  Then, brush with the reserved apricot preserves.  Broil, watching carefully (!), for about 3 minutes.  Cool for about 1-1/2 hours.  Cut with a chef's knife to try and keep the crust from breaking.  Very yummy and rich !

SO, after all of that, I had what my Wife described as the "...most beautiful thing [I] ever made...". (!)  I'm not sure I will ever do this again - there are certainly some ways to put together all of the good-tasting stuff without adding the fru-fru (sp?) overhead of rosette-ing the top.  BUT, here's my final product (below), along with my favorite knife that my little sister gave me.  Make this tart at least once !

* Their recipe was for a 9" tart pan. My pan is a 12" one. Without doing the math (did it later though), I decided to double the ingredients for the crust, and make 1-1/2 times the filling. It worked out almost exactly right. (!?)