Dutch Appeltaart

A recent recipe for Substitution Cooking School with Jam and Clare was Maria “Oma” Bowditch’s Dutch Appeltaart.  Sadly, Clare’s mum recently passed away, so the group baked this recipe as a tribute to her.

This tart is delicious, but it’s absolutely huge and it ain’t diet food. I totally understand why Alice in Frames’ husband told her she had to get it out of the house.  I gave half of  my tart to my downstairs neighbours and another quarter to a neighbour in a different part of my apartment complex. I hope they enjoy it! I am left with a quarter of the tart, which is much more manageable for one person.

You can see that this apple tart is just delicious, and it smells devine while baking. The pastry is very easy to work with and forgiving. That is just as well, as the tart is baked in a springform pan.

If you would like to make this Dutch Appeltaart yourself, you will need:

Pastry

3 cups plain flour
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
pinch of salt
grated zest of half a lemon
280g room temperature butter, cubed

1 egg, beaten

Filling

6-7 Granny Smith apples
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon 
juice of 1 lemon

1/2 cup sultanas

1 beaten egg

extra granulated sugar for sprinkling

To make the pastry:

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Combine the dry ingredients and zest in the bowl of a stand mixer or food processor. Add the butter, a few cubes at a time, and mix on low speed or blitz to combine with the flour. Continue until all of the butter has been added and the mixture looks like crumbs.  Mix in the egg - your dough should come together. If it doesn’t (mine didn’t), add small amounts of ice water until it does. Bring the dough together into a disc and divide it into 2 pieces, being one third of the dough and two thirds of the dough. Put the one third piece aside.

Grease and line a 9” springform pan.

Turn the two thirds piece of dough out onto a lightly floured bench or place it between two pieces of baking paper, and roll it out until it is big enough to line the base and sides of your springform pan (~ 16” round). Carefully line the insides of your springform pan with the rolled out dough - do it in a patchwork and smooth the pieces together if necessary.

To make the filling:

Peel and core the apples; cut the apples into quarters, then cut each quarter into 4 pieces.  Put the apple pieces into a large bowl. Add the cinnamon, lemon juice and sugar to the bowl and toss the apples until well coated. Add the sultanas and mix well.

Place the apples into the pastry shell in the springform pan.

Take the remaining piece of dough and roll it out into a circle large enough to cover the top of the springform pan.  Cut the dough into strips just under 1” wide, and lay them in a lattice pattern on top of the apples. Press the strips into the sides well.

Brush the top of the tart with the beaten egg, then sprinkle with sugar.

Bake the tart for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until golden brown on top.

Allow the tart to cool in the tin before unmoulding and serving.