Gluten Free Apple Walnut Tart with Fig Glaze

   It seems like all I've been cooking when I have been cooking around here lately has been desserts, sweets, simple stuff. Mainly, because of Fran being in hospice and all the family details Alan and I are overseeing, I haven't been doing a whole lot of cooking. Big meal, feast type cooking I mean. The sort I usually do when entertaining friends. My entertaining has been a lot simpler, a movie night at our house with wine, cheese and dessert afterwards.

   Oh, and then I got sick. To everyone who warned me to take it easy... Yes, you were right. With all the stress going on, I hit the wall earlier this week and have been in bed for the last four days. The last active thing I remember doing was standing out on the road in freezing rain by the side of highway 12 trying to make myself understood on a cell phone in a cell phone dead zone (yep, you AT&T) to some hospital person while wearing a Marge Gunderson hat.

   Next thing I knew I was flat on my ass in bed with a temperature, sore throat and hocking yes, hocking not hacking cough. After three days of lots of herbal treatments, hot teas,and total bed rest, the fever that kept getting worse. Then my voice went. I visited  the doctor. So now I'm taking an antibiotic, not something I usually do, and already feeling much better. But before it all went pear shaped around here, I did manage to do some baking. My friend Terri can't have gluten and I always amuse myself messing around with gluten free desserts for her to enjoy. So last week before any of this happened, we decided to have a movie night for some friends, Terri among them. In searching around for something to serve, I decided to take advantage of what we've got a lot of around here right now, apples, walnuts and figs. Just what was needed for a Sonoma Winter Tart, and of course, it's gluten free.

   I also tried something else with this dessert. Instead of using my own mixture of gluten free flours, (see the recipe here.) I decided to try a box of King Arthur Gluten Free All Purpose Flour that I picked up at the market. I usually don't buy packaged gluten free flour, but I wanted to try it, and yeah I also didn't feel like doing the whole measuring mixing flours thing. Turns out it worked just fine and I didn't need to add any xanthan gum to this crust making things even easier. The recipe is my gluten free adaptation of an Apple Walnut Tart by Chef Patrick O'Connell.

Apple Walnut Tart with Fig Glaze

Here's What You Need:

Pastry:
1 and 1/4 cup of all purpose gluten free flour , plus extra for dusting.
1 stick of cold butter
1 tsp kosher salt
2 Tbs sugar
2 to 4 Tbs of ice water

Filling:
3/4 cup of walnuts
1/3 cup plus 2 Tbs of sugar
4 Tbs room temperature butter
1 egg
3 large Granny Smith Apples peeled, cored, and cut into 1/4 inch slices
1 Tbs gluten free flour
juice of 1 fresh lemon
1 tsp of vanilla
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2 Tbs of fig jam
An 11 inch tart pan

Here's What To Do:

Cut the cold butter into 1/4 inch pieces and stick them into the freezer for about 15 minutes, you want that butter CHILLED.

In a food processor gently mix together the flour, sugar and salt.

Add in the cold cold butter.

Pulse the food processor about 6 times to mix in the butter.  Use the bread blade to do this. The dough should look like coarse meal with a few small pieces of butter here and there.

Keep the food processor running and add in the ice water 1 Tbs at a time. You don't want to add too much water, just enough so the dough clumps together.

Take the dough out of the food processor and shape it into a ball and flatten it.

Wrap the dough round in a piece of plastic wrap and tuck it into the fridge to chill for at least an hour.

You can keep the dough in the fridge for a couple of days if you want to get a jump on this dessert.

Make sure you take out the dough 5 minutes before you're going to work with it.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

To roll out the dough when you're ready, dust a piece of waxed paper with gluten free flour.

Place the flattened round of dough on the paper, sprinkle it with a bit more gluten free flour, then top it with a second sheet of waxed paper.

Roll the dough out between the two sheets of waxed paper. It keeps the dough from tearing.

Place the rolled out dough into the tart pan, trim any extra crust to the rim of the tart pan.
Stick the tart pan with the pie crust in it for 30 minutes. Like I said, this crust has got to be kept cool.
Butter a big piece of tin foil.

Place the foil, buttered side down, into the pie crust and up the sides.

Fill the pie shell with rice, beans or pie weights.

I used dried garbanzo beans.
Pop the tart pan onto a baking sheet and bake it in the oven for about 20 minutes.
Take the foil and beans out the crust.
Poke holes in the bottom of the crust with a fork then bake for another 10 minutes.

Take the crust out of the oven and raise the temperature to 375 degrees.
Grind 3/4 cup of walnuts to a fine meal.

In a medium bowl, mix 4Tbs of unsalted butter together with 1/3 cup of sugar.
Add in an egg, vanilla and 1 Tbs of gluten free flour and beat it all together.

Fold in the ground walnuts.
Spread this mixture into the bottom of the pie crust.

Peel, core and slice 3 Granny Smith Apples into 1/4 inch slices.

Squeeze the lemon juice into the apples, add in cinnamon, and nutmeg and mix it all together.
Layer the apple slices in circles around the top of the tart...

...until the tart is covered.

Sprinkle the top of the tart with some sugar and pop it into the oven for about 35 minutes.
When the apples turn soft and start to brown at the edges, it's done.
Place the tart on a cooling rack.
In a small pan heat up 2 Tbs of fig jam. I get mine from local fig gleaning.
When the jam is melty, brush it over the cooling tart.

Serve it up with some unsweetened whipped cream and a cup of chai.

   The tart was delicious, all the Winter flavors of Wine Country on a plate. And the crust perfect. I couldn't have been more pleased. In fact several people asked me if I was I sure it was gluten free. Hey, when someone has an allergy, I don't mess around. I really like the ease of the King Arthur premixed gluten free flour. For hurried holiday baking it's just the trick, and saves me the grief of rummaging though my rat trap of a larder for the various and sundry bags of odd flours I am routinely collecting. In fact my kitchen is slowly turning into a gluten free flour museum. This could help clear the decks.

   I'm now getting back to recovering from whatever bug it was that bit me, I'm dreaming of a couple of interesting Indian twists on holiday dishes. With a little luck I ought to be back on my feet and back in the kitchen soon. Follow along on Twitter @kathygori

An Apple Caramel Tart Perfect For Halloween

   See that tart up there? I made that, and in making it, I feel as though I invented the wheel or the iPad or something. Now for everyone out there who is a born baker this is no great accomplishment. Among all the food writers and bakers and chefs I know, making a dessert is no problem. I've seen perfect cakes, towers of delicately iced cookies, immaculately crusted pies, meringues that look like the Himalyas, cunningly iced cupcakes and all manner of other delights. I have generally been in awe of such things because for 99% of the year I really do not bake. When the holidays come around, I crank out a pumpkin or mince pie, (the repertoire ends there) a few cookies and maybe, just maybe the occasional cheese cake.

   It's not like I don't have the baking equipment. I do. I have Madelaine pans, cookie sheets and angel food cake pans, spring form molds and pie and cake pans galore. It's just that I never use them. I love to buy them though. I don't know what sort of sickness this is. Maybe it's an offshoot of the people who buy shoes and hide them in the back of the closet and never wear them, (I've done that too) but this is much worse. Baking equipment makes me feel all cozy and homey and long winter's nappey. Plus as long as I have the equipment and I can look at it, it's not like I'm actually eating any of the cakes and pies etc and therefore my butt gets no bigger. It's some sort of vicarious thrill that even I don't understand. I just keep acquiring the stuff and never do anything with it. Well, all that ended the other day.

   Thursday we remembered that we had booked a dinner date with Alan's cousin Joanie who was coming up from Berkeley with a friend. Usually that kind of news sends me into the planning stages for a multi-course Indian company feast, but with the mass of work we're involved in right now, cooking a big complicated Indian dinner was a definite no no. Not that I couldn't put something simple together, but I wanted the evening to be special. I decided to prepare a simple classical Americana home-style harvest dinner.

   I made an arugula salad and sprinkled it with pomegranate arils and toasted chopped pistachios. I roasted a chicken, I fixed creamed spinach, roasted baby new potatoes in parchment and made Brussels sprouts  with bacon. I whipped up  some buttermilk biscuits and opened a jar of my pear chutney. I thought I was all set. Then I remembered, or rather forgot about dessert. That's when the trouble started. Give me an Indian meal and I can plan a perfect dessert. Give me an American style meal... not so much. I get totally lost and usually end up making ice cream or strawberry shortcake... but mostly ice cream. With an American menu, unless it's Thanksgiving (pie) or Christmas, (my mom brings something) I'm lost.

    Now when I mentioned my mom brings something for Christmas I don't mean she actually makes anything. If I am not a baker, my mom is really, really and truly not a baker. We like to tease that she invented lava cake eons ago. Only it wasn't chocolate, the icing was puke green (hey it was St . Patricks Day) and the stuff that came out when it was cut was not a filling, it was the cake batter itself because she never ever pre-heated (pre-heating is for sissies) her oven which brought about some pretty interesting results. We stopped her baking quite a few years ago and she's now found a wonderful bakery which takes care of all the family's cake and pastry needs. So when it comes to planning a dessert, I wasn't picking up the phone to mom to ask for advice. Instead, I turned to Twitter.

     I put out a call for help and my Twitter friends answered. I got great suggestions from @janis_tester and @WickedRandom which led me attempt an apple tart. After all, among all the rest of the baking junk I have around the house, I am the proud owner of two virgin tart pans, a 9" and an 11". It was time to put them to use. I searched around the internet and came up with a recipe from Bon Appetit Magazine  November 2006 edition. All praise to Lord Google.
   It was an Apple Tart with Caramel Sauce, or as the recipe put it, Caramel Apples for adults! Wheee. Sounds racy! Apples and caramel. Thrills spills and challenges, especially the caramel part. A year or so ago I was complaining to my friend Paula Wolfert that I was unable to properly caramelize sugar. She told me I was using the wrong sort of vessel and gave me an old French copper pot to use.

I was about to put it to the test and make my first hopeIdon'tscrewup caramel.

Apple Caramel Tart

 Here's what to do:
 The Caramel
 Ingredients:
  1 and 1/2 cups of tight packed dark brown sugar
  6 Tbs of unsalted butter

   1 and 1/2 cups of whipping cream

Bring all of these ingredients to a boil over a medium high heat. Whisk vigorously untill all the sugar has dissolved.

Boil the mixture until the caramel thickens enough to coat a spoon thickly. Whisk it ofetn. This should take about 10 minutes or so.
   This actually turned out to be the scariest ten minutes of the whole process, because this is normally where I usually wind up with a spoon attached to a pot of caramel cement. But not this time!

Lovely dark thick caramel. Perfect.
  According to the recipe, the caramel sauce can be made 5 days ahead. Just cover it, refrigerate it and reheat it, whisking it over a low heat until it's liquid again.
 Now on the the really ugly part of this entire enterprise.

The Crust
Ingredients:
  1 and 1/4 cups of unbleached all purpose flour
  3/4 cups of powdered sugar
  1/4 tsp of kosher salt
  1 stick of chilled unsalted butter diced
  2 egg yolks

 Put the flour, sugar and salt into a food processor and mix together.

Add in the butter

 Mix until a coarse meal forms
 Add in the egg yolks

  
 Note here: I added 1 extra egg yolk for a total count of 3 yolks. The crust is extremely dry as the recipe is written and can be difficult to work with. I was almost ready to add a bit of water, but didn't, though attempting this again I probably will.

Pulse the dough until moist clumps form. Then roll it into a ball, and flatten it into a disc shape.

 Wrap it in plastic wrap and store it in the fridge for at least 1 hour.
 The scariest part of this whole process was rolling this very stiff dough out, but roll it I did and placed in in a 9" tart pan.

 There are no photos of the rolling process as I started to sweat like a pig and screamed at Alan to get out of the kitchen with the camera. No one should have to see this.
 Roll the dough out on a floured surface to 13" and place it in the tart pan . Cut off the overhang so it's even with the pan, then pinch the sides of the dough up to 1/4 of an inch above the side of the pan.
 Needless to say, the dough went into the pan.
 Preheat the oven to 375 degrees

The Filling
Ingredients:
  6 large Macintosh or Golden Delicious apples

  1 Tbs flour
  1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
  1/2 tsp ground cardamom
Peel, core and quarter the apples.
Toss the sliced apples in the sugar, cinnamon and cardamom mixture until they're well coated.
Arrange the apple pieces cut side down in a circle around the outside edge of the pan.

  Cut the remaining slices lengthwise in half and stand them in the center.
 As you can see I did not do this. I am bad at following this sort of direction. The slices should have been all pointing toward the center of the tart. Ikea needs to make tart directions or something, as I couldn't  visualize what they were talking about and kept calling for an allen wrench. Maybe it was all those years building Heathkit models as a kid. Anyway, I got those apples in the tart.
  Bake the tart in the oven at 375 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour or so until the apples have gotten tender and the crust has browned.
 Take it out of the oven and brush the apples with some of the warm caramel sauce.

  Let the tart cool to room temperature and unmold it from the tart pan.

Pretty! It looked and smelled great and I got it out of the tart pan in one piece. I was so freaking proud of myself! I was rocking my inner Julia Child. I served the tart with unsweetened whipped cream and a drizzle of warm caramel sauce.

   They loved it, and I mean really and truly Sally Field time loved it! I'm definitely making this again and it has emboldened me to take out some of that other baking equipment that I've got squirreled away and start experimenting. But first I'm whipping up some tasty gluten free Diwali sweets, plus a crunchy delicious vegan savory. Follow along on Twitter @kathygori