Apple Tart

• How to make four kinds of apple tart
• How to work with puff pastry
• How to make shortbread dough and sweetened pie and tart dough
• What is frangipane and how to make it
• How to make fruit tarts with both raw and cooked fruit

The pastry cart is an invention well suited to food voyeurism because it gives you a chance to make a quick visual study and, with a little experience, to judge the skills of a restaurant’s pastry chef before the maître d’ even gets you to your table. On every pastry cart in France, in both modest and elegant places, you’ll spot an apple tart in one guise or another. You may get a quick glance at a simple classic apple tart, made by baking apple wedges in a pastry shell coated with a layer of applesauce made from the ends of the apples; a tarte Tatin, which is an upside-down apple tart; a tarte alsacienne, in which the apples are surrounded with custard; or a thin and crispy feuilletée tart. The only version you won’t see is an apple pie. Pies, which the French call tourtes, have a sheet of dough on top, covering what’s inside. French cooks usually reserve this treatment for savory dishes such as hot pâtés.