Apple caramel tart

Delish dinner party recipe - caramel and apple tart with a shortcrust pastry base. Oh my Lord, how absolutely wonderful! We had some friends over for dinner on the weekend and I served this up for dessert. Neither of our friends had ever eaten caramel or Dulce de Leche before, and the looks on their faces when they tasted this was priceless.

I picked up a very large jar of Dulce de Leche earlier in the day at a Mexican food store just up the street, so I had plenty of caramel to make this. If you have never tried Dulce de Leche, do yourself a favour and get some. It is so delicious and addictive. It is basically vanilla-flavoured caramel, just like the caramel you get from boiling condensed milk in the can for a few hours.



I also made my own shortcrust pastry for the first time too, as you can't buy it here. It was much easier than I expected and really biscuity and crunchy, just how I like it. And you can do most of the way beforehand (make and bake the pastry etc), which means you can sit and relax with your friends instead of being in the kitchen the whole evening.

What you'll need

For the pastry

125 g butter
100g icing sugar
sea salt
255 g flour
2 free-range egg yolks
2 tablespoons milk or water, cold

For the filling

500g Dulce de Leche caramel
2 medium-sized cooking apples
1 tablespoon butter

To serve

Creme fraiche or good vanilla icecream

What to do

Make the pastry. In a bowl, cream the butter and icing sugar with electric beaters. Add a pinch of salt and mix in. Now sift in the flour, add the egg yolks and mix well with the electric beaters until the mixture looks like fresh breadcrumbs. Now add the milk and mix for a few seconds to combine. The mixture will now be quite lumpy. Turn out onto a floured bench or board and bring together into a ball with your hands. Don't knead it or work it too much. Form it into a long, fat sausage, cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge for at least an hour.

Remove the pastry from the fridge and take off the plastic wrap. Grease and line a 25 - 30cm pie dish with baking paper. Cut the pastry into slices about 1cm thick, place the slices overlapping each other in the pie dish, then use your fingers to gently squish them together to form the pastry base. Make the thickness as even as you can, even up the sides of the dish. Trim any excess pastry and remove. Place in the freezer to chill for at least an hour.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Remove the pastry from the oven and blind bake in the oven (I keep a packet of rice in the cupboard just for this purpose) for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool.

When ready to serve, spoon the caramel into the tart shell and smooth to the edges.

Peel, core and thinly slice the apples. Heat a pan with the butter over medium heat. Place the apples into the pan, and cook, stirring constantly for about 5 minutes until the apples start to brown and soften. Remove from the heat and let cool for five minutes. Now arrange the apples over the caramel.

Serve immediately while the apples are still warm with a dollop of creme fraiche or good vanilla icecream.

*You'll need a sharp knife to cut this tart. The pastry may crumble and break a little, but it is so yummy you can forgive a little mess.