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Daring Bakers: Tarte Tatin

March 27, 2015 By Korena in the Kitchen 19 Comments

Tarte Tatin | Korena in the Kitchen

For the March Daring Bakers’ Challenge, Korena from Korena in the Kitchen taught us that some treats are best enjoyed upside down. She challenged us to make a tarte Tatin from scratch.

This month I was excited to host another Daring Bakers’ challenge, for which I chose the tarte Tatin. This classic French dessert is basically the apple pie version of an upside-down cake: apples are caramelized in sugar in a saucepan, covered with pastry and baked, and then inverted on a plate to serve. It’s a great example of the magic of caramelized sugar: the apples take on a deep, rich mahogany colour and become infused with the complex flavours of a well-cooked caramel, and the crisp puff pastry base also becomes practically candied with caramel at the edges, resulting in a fantastic mix of soft, crunchy, and chewy textures.

The tart is named after the Tatin sisters, who ran a hotel near Paris in the 1880s. Apparently, one day one of the sisters forgot to put a bottom crust on her apple pie, but instead of the disaster she was expecting to pull out of the oven, she ended up with a dessert so loved by the hotel guests that it became the hotel’s signature dish. However, this sweet story conflicts with the fact that a similar upside-down apple tart called tarte Solognotte (named after the Sologne region in France) existed long before the tarte Tatin, suggesting that the Tatin sisters’ creation was actually just an updated and improved version of the tarte Solognotte. Either way, it is a stunningly delicious yet simple and rustic dessert….

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Filed Under: Cakes & Pies, Daring Bakers / Daring Kitchen Challenges, Fruit, Recipes Tagged With: apple, baking, caramel, Daring Bakers, dessert, French cuisine, pastry, rough puff, tarte Tatin

Whole Wheat Sourdough Croissants

October 21, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 38 Comments

Whole Wheat Sourdough Croissants | Korena in the KitchenAlmost a year ago exactly, David Lebovitz posted a recipe for whole wheat croissants on his blog. I have been meaning to make them ever since, and I finally found an excuse to do it for this month’s Sourdough Surprises project. I haven’t baked with the group for a few months and my poor, poor starter has definitely been suffering because of it: when I pulled it out of the fridge at the beginning of the month, knowing that I’d need to revive it after not feeding it for a very long time, the top had actually turned grey. My heart sank because I thought I’d killed for real, but upon closer inspection it smelled fine and I was able to scrape off the grey layer (which was just discolouration and not anything more sinister). A few aggressive discards and feeds later, it was back to its happy, bubbling self. Moral of the story: despite appearances, a well-established sourdough starter is actually really really hard to kill!

Whole Wheat Sourdough Croissants | Korena in the Kitchen

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Filed Under: Bread, Breakfast & Brunch, Recipes Tagged With: bread, breakfast, brunch, butter, croissants, French cuisine, laminated dough, recipe, sourdough, Sourdough Surprises

Daring Bakers: Strawberry Savarin

April 27, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 48 Comments

Strawberry Savarin | Korena in the KitchenNatalia of Gatti Fili e Farina challenges us to make a traditional Savarin, complete with soaking syrup and cream filling! We were to follow the Savarin recipe but were allowed to be creative with the soaking syrup and filling, allowing us to come up with some very delicious cakes!

Before this month, I had of course heard of the great epicure and gastronome Brillat-Savarin, but not of this cake by the same name – which is quite unlike any other cake I’ve ever made. It starts with a rich brioche dough baked in a ring pan (there are special Savarin pans, but a bundt or angel food cake pan works too). The baked cake is soaked in a flavoured syrup, which it soaks up like a thirsty sponge, and then the hole in the middle is filled with pastry cream and topped with fruit. Savarin is very similar to baba au rhum, which is soaked in rum syrup and usually made into individual cakes, and both baba and Savarin are somehow related to Polish babka (sort of like this babka – it’s all one big extended brioche family).

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Filed Under: Cakes & Pies, Daring Bakers / Daring Kitchen Challenges, Fruit, Recipes Tagged With: baba, baking, brioche, Daring Bakers, dessert, French cuisine, recipe, Savarin, strawberries, yeasted cake

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I'm Korena: cook, baker, dirty-dishes-maker. My favourite things include flour, butter, sugar, and chocolate. Read More…

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All content © Korena Vezerian and Korena in the Kitchen, 2011 – 2021. Please contact me before duplicating any content, including pictures. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Korena Vezerian and Korena in the Kitchen with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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