November may have come and gone but that doesn’t mean one can’t enjoy the delights of the Toffee apple and our latest Peckish post offers up a recipe for a beautiful Rose Toffee Apple Tart.

Ingredients

1 pack of short crust pastry

1tsp cinnamon

2 tbsps of caramel (I used the pre-made caramel in a tin, or you could boil condensed milk, see caramel banana blondie recipe)

140g caster sugar (+ 1tbsp for apple roses)

4 egg yolks

250ml double cream

2-3 apples

Equipment

Cake tin (preferable with removable base)

Baking parchment

Rice

Saucepan

Measuring jug

Peeler

Sieve

Method

• Preheat the oven to 220°C/ 200 °C fan/ gas mark 6
• Line your baking tray, with baking parchment, or lightly cover the tin in oil or butter and sprinkle with flour.
• I bought pre-rolled pastry as I don’t have a rolling pin, but obviously you don’t have to, I’m just lazy. If you are rolling your pastry, roll it to about 1cm thick. Save about 10cm of it though, as you’ll need this to make your apple roses.
• Place in the lined tin, and prick the base with a fork quite a few times, then dust the cinnamon on to the base. Here we are going to bake the base blind, which insures you won’t have a ‘soggy bottom’ as Mary Berry would say. So cover the pastry with baking parchment and weight it with about a cup of rice. This basically means that you will cook the pastry slightly and maintain its shape as other wise it can rise and go strange.
• Place the base in the oven for about 15 minutes, it should be cooked slightly, but not too much as it will be going in the oven again once you’ve made the custard.
• Whilst the base is cooking make the apple roses. Cut the pastry you’ve saved into thin long strips and set to one side.
• Divide your apples into quarters and core them. Then get your peeler and peel each quarter into really thin crescent shapes.
• Once you’ve done this to all your apples, get your saucepan and bring it to the boil, add your tbsp of sugar and stir it until it’s dissolved. Put all your apples in, stirring them to make sure they all get covered. Cook them for a couple of minutes until they become more malleable. Then drain them and pat them dry with a tissue to get rid of any excess liquid.
• Now for the fun part! Place the apple slices on the pastry skin side up all the way to the end, and simply roll them up, and you’ll have your rose. Simply repeat until you have all the roses you want for your topping.
• If you haven’t taken out your pastry base yet, it will probably be ready by now.
• For the custard, put the sugar in a dry pan on a medium heat and simply leave it until it turns golden brown, you really have to try not to stir it (although I know it’s tempting) as otherwise you can crystallise your caramel.
• Warm your milk slightly in the microwave for about 20 seconds. Slowly pour the cream into the sugar, mixing thoroughly. If you’re not carefully you can get a big lump of sugar, however this isn’t the end of the world, you merely need to put it back onto a low heat and mix it until the sugar melts into the cream.
• Leave this to cool for about 5 minutes before you mix in the egg yolks, as you don’t want any scrambling to occur.
• Place your caramel on top of your cinnamon pastry base and just smooth it over with a spoon until you have an evenly smooth layer.
• Pour on top your toffee custard, and decoratively place your apples on top.
• Bake in the oven for about 40 minutes, until when poked with a knife, the knife comes out clean.
• And voila! Great on a cosy winter night served with cream or custard.

 Genevieve Levy