Oli
Oli
Resident eejit. Radio4, kitchen dancing, owning recipe books to read not follow
Jan 5, 2020 2 min read

Christmas dried fruit tart tatin

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Whilst noodling through John Whaite’s very excellent Comfort I ran across his fig, prune and port tart tatin. I’ve always rather enjoyed tart tatin, with it’s unctuous and gooey fruits and pleasingly crisp base/top, and it’s the time of year when dried fruits are often on offer in the supermarkets. I ended up adding different dried fruits and using almost half the quantities in the recipe because it was only for the four of us. I’m pretty sure you could swap in dried apricots and maybe some plump raisins into here, but not miss out the figs, the star of the show.

You will need

  • Enough dried fruit to cover the base of an oven proof frying pan (I used dried figs, prunes and stoned dates)
  • Enough port to submerge the fruit about half way
  • A slice of unsalted butter about 1cm off the block
  • A tablespoon of golden sugar (I used half and half white and dark demerara because I didn’t have any light demerara in)
  • A pack of instant puff pastry

Do

  • Soak the fruit in the port for as long as you can. I had it in for about 8 hours.
  • Stick the oven on 200oC
  • In the pan you’re going to put in the oven melt the butter and stir in the sugar
  • Bubble until it forms a light caramel
  • Add the fruit and port, lowering the temperature so it doesn’t burn and stir until the fruit is hot through
  • Turn off the heat and lay the pastry over the top of the pan. Work round the edge using the pan edge to slice the pasty
  • Tuck the edges down into the pan. Watch you finger on the super hot caramel
  • Score the pastry top a few times and stick in the over for around 30 minutes until the pastry is puffed up and golden
  • Leave to cool a little and then carefully turn out onto a plate (I stuck a plate over the top and then turns it over wearing oven gloves. beware hot pan caramel)
  • Serve in slices warm, we had a good blob of creme fraiche who’s acidity offset the sweetness nicely.

Result

Make sure each slice has some of each fruit in it. It’s sweet, gooey, morish and smells of Christmas. I might try adding some orange zest or maybe some mixed spice next time.

Soaking Fruit in caramel ready for the oven Fresh from the oven GET IN MY FACE