Apple Galette and Tarts

It was my mom's birthday weekend, so I asked her what kind of birthday cake she would like. She said "apple pie." Despite my attempts to persuade her towards a cake, I decided to make her pie. I guess we can be just as celebratory with pie...

Originally, I was thinking of using puff pastry, but I couldn't find any at my closest grocery store. Back home, I went online and realized that I needed to go to a grocery store with President's Choice products! Which I found amusing as I was making these birthday treats with my friend who works at said grocery store. Yes Laura, if you're reading this. I've learnt my lesson, I should always go to Loblaws.

I ended up getting Pillsbury's refrigerated pie crusts. I know, I wasn't making the crust from scratch and I'm thankful for that choice. I don't think it would have turned out well on this extremely hot day.

The store-brought pie crusts were extremely easy to use. We defrosted them for 15 minutes and rolled them out. The pie crusts come in two sheets, for the first one, we made tarts. Using a circle cookie-cutter, we placed the dough into six mini tart pans (they look like this). You can combine all the scraps and roll them out again. For the second sheet, we used it to make the galette. Place the dough on a sheet of parchment paper.

Apple Galette and Tart Filling
Recipe from Essential Pepin 
(Jacques Pépin had his own dough recipe that was omitted here.)

4 Red Delicious apples
2 tablespoons of honey
2 tablespoons of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon of unsalted butter

1. Preheat your oven to 200°C (400°F).
2. Peel, halve, and core the apples. Carefully slice the apples to 1/4-inch-thick.
3. Arranged the sliced apples on the dough. For the galette, keeping them within 1-inch of the edges and slightly overlapping. For the tarts, arrange them with the peeled side out.
4. Drizzle the honey over the sliced apples.
5. Mix the sugar and cinnamon together and sprinkle on top of the honeyed apples.
6. Cut the butter into tiny cubes and dot them over the apples.
7. For the galette, gently fold the edges inwards. You'll noticed that I did this before step four - oops!
8. Bake for an hour or until the crust is brown and crisp. The apples should be tender.
9. Serve the galette and tarts at room temperature. Preferably with ice cream.

Step 3 - arrange the sliced apples.

Step four - drizzling honey over the apples.

Step 5 - sprinkling the cinnamon sugar.

Looking delicious out of the oven!

Instead of vanilla, try pairing your apple tarts with maple and walnut ice cream.