it's okay to be an apple tart!

This recipe calls for six apples. I remembered Claire saying in her tarte tatin video on the Dessert Person Youtube that it’s good to get a variety of apples, because you get different flavors. So I got 2 each of these three varieties. The furthest left is red-green, the middle is big and red-yellow, and the furthest right is yellow and was the tastiest to eat by far while baking.

Obviously, I have been slacking a little on the baking and the blogging! It’s been relentlessly rainy, so I put off going to the store for several days. Also, yesterday I started playing Animal Crossing on my new Nintendo Switch Lite, and I’m no longer sure if I ever really needed human, non-Animal Crossing interaction. Maybe Zhongyun, where I am so appreciated and adored, is all I need…?

This is a picture of Animal Crossing Angie in her snowy, tree-filled Animal Crossing world. I LOVE ANIMAL CROSSING

I also think I’ve just been feeling not so good or motivated since Christmas. For example, on two separate instances in the last five days, I have done a full Pilates class from my bed, because I wanted to move but I also didn’t want to get out of bed. Holidays can be weird and hard, and the weather is making me lethargic. It’s just one of those stretches of time!

Anyway, Pilates on a mattress may be worse for your alignment than not doing Pilates at all, but I had a great class last night and was feeling better this morning! Also, the sun came out for like five minutes, I reasoned that if I restart baking today I can still make all 5 planned recipes before next week if I bake over the weekend (a strategy that is redolent of my poor time management in completing schoolwork), plus Joe told my mom that we are heading into two major snowstorms this week, so it was clearly time to get going. While it can be wonderful and needed to occasionally spend between 48-168 unbroken hours without leaving one’s bed, today it felt good to do some cleaning, go shopping, and bake.*

*Also, if I hadn’t gone today I would have missed the chance to drive by FIVE (I AM NOT KIDDING) Subaru Forresters parked in a row next to each other at a nearby trailhead. Either Subaru is betting its integrated marketing bucks on a very sparsely populated area, or sometimes people on the Olympic Peninsula are delicious caricatures** of themselves.

**I, of course, say this as a person whose considerably gay and also improbable life ambition is to own a union-made Subaru Forrester. They’re so practical for the outdoors! That 4WD can conquer any incline!

Thinly sliced apples, apple+apple cider+vegan butter+brown sugar+vanilla bean compote, and pastry dough waiting to be assembled into today’s apple tart!

Apple tart

Those who have heard me talk about how much I hate apples may be surprised that I chose such an apple-heavy recipe. But, Claire loves baking with apples so much that it wouldn’t feel right not to try one of her apple recipes. Plus, I needed to use up the other half of the palmier pastry dough, and I don’t mind apples in baked goods as much.

Vegan substitutions

• 2 sticks unsalted butter for the caramelized apple compote and the apricot jam glaze w/ 2 sticks vegan Earth Balance butter

• 1 large egg beaten for egg washing the pastry w/ 1 flax egg

Apples simmering on the stove to be mashed into compote. I couldn’t find a heat-proof spatula, so I had to use my mother’s classique Chinese ladle, pictured here.

Making this apple tart did not make me like apples any more. The tart consists of a pastry crust, a caramelized apple compote, and thinly sliced apples, baked and then glazed with apricot jam. Making the compote was simply a tedious and unpleasant process. I’m not patient by nature with slow-cooking things, and halfway through, the recipe calls for you to continuously mash the apples as they cook.

Close up shot of apples cooking down and my mashing implement

My right hand, my mashing hand, is also the hand I’ve been using to fish on my island in the game Animal Crossing, a game where I am adored on my island, Zhongyun. So it’s been a bit overworked, and started to cramp. I, as a result, got extremely grumpy during the 20-30 minute compote-making process.

Apple tart right after being assembled and placed into the oven

The taste of this apple tart, on the other hand, definitely made me like apples more! The compote, though it is basically homemade applesauce, which I normally don’t eat, is very tasty when warm and leaking into flaky, buttery dough. The palmier pastry is even better the second time around. I think I probably put down too much compote, because I wanted to use it all up, so the pretty edges of the pastry got flooded. But this had an unforeseen upside, because the compote leaked down and caramelized nicely on the bottom of the tart. Even though it’s not as pleasing to look at, it was a delicious surprise!

The finished apple tart with its thinly sliced apples shingled on top, fresh from the oven and just-glazed with apricot jam and butter

Where I would serve this: in one of my many daydream fantasy worlds, the one where I have managed to become the cherished housewife of a brilliant and beautiful woman with a career that simultaneously supports our one-income family and contributes to making the world a better place. My wife’s colleagues come over for dinner and, wearing a lacy apron and smelling like jasmine, I serve them apple tart fresh from the oven for dessert. Everyone exclaims, even the mean co-workers who have been snidely asking each other how I possibly landed my wife. Pleased but ever gracious, I wave off their compliments demurely. “It’s just a simple apple tart! You can make the pastry dough days in advance and throw it together at the last minute! But yes, it is vegan — you probably couldn’t tell!”

Do you sense that we recently rewatched the 2003 film Mona Lisa Smile, directed by Mike Newell and starring Julia Roberts?

Plated slice of apple tart with the rest in the background. You can see in this photo how much compote I poured on there! Good thing the pastry dough still cooked through just the right amount!

On The Blood Orange and Olive Oil Cake

Many (2) beloved readers have written in with thoughts about last week’s blood orange and olive oil cake. Names have been changed for privacy.

Alexandre d’Aibes, my friend and Actual Chef extraordinaire, had two great suggestions: 1) do a redemption week of retrying failed recipes, and 2) sub the eggs in the cake not with flax egg but with extra oil and whipped aquafaba (the water from canned chickpeas). Thanks, Alexandre! Per Alexandre’s advice, I bought two cans of chickpeas at the store today and I will attempt the blood orange and olive oil cake again at some point. I also bought some medium-firm tofu because I’m wondering if I could incorporate small amounts of that for structure?

Keira Yeun, who was my best friend on December 14, 2012 (see Fig. A at bottom), writes not with helpful guidance but with this: “I am sorry your olive oil cake didn’t work out but it’s just like when Julie burned the bourgionon.” Good point Keira, and it’s always nice to hear from another fan of the classic 2009 film Julie & Julia, starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child and Amy Adams as Julie Powell, who in the movie burns a boeuf bourguignon on a very important night.

another shot of the sliced apple tart, where you can appreciate the overlapping contours of the golden-brown, glazed apple slices on top!

Thanks for reading!

Fig. A

This is a screenshot of a Facebook status update posted on December 14, 2012 at 7:55AM (???) that reads: “Angie was the first to hack my iPhone haha she’s so cool we must be best friends”. The post received 3 likes, 1 comment, and 1 share. Photo credit to Kiera Wilson