Perfect Tarte Tatin

Serves 6-8

1 Pack ready made puff pastry
5 cox's apples
200g Caster Sugar
100g Unsalted butter cubed
½ tsp Cinnamon
Double cream of vanilla ice cream

Preheat the oven to 190˚C

Use an oven proof dish or frying pan that is around 18cm. Prepare the pastry by rolling it with some flour sprinkled over so it doesn't stick until it's the thickness of a pound coin. Turn the dish you are going to use upside down over the pastry and cut around it leaving around 1½cm extra pastry around.

Core and peel the apples and cut in half.
Over a gentle heat melt the sugar until it becomes golden brown, do not be tempted to stir it. When caramelised add the butter and stir in to make a caramel sauce, don't worry if it looks separated just keep stirring or whisk.
Arrange the apples cut side up in the pan since you are going to turn it upside down to serve. The apples shrink in the oven so pack them in as tight as you can, filling any gaps with smaller sliced apples. Sprinkle on cinnamon and cover the pan and let simmer for 5-8 mins.

Place the pastry on top of the apples using a fork or you fingers to ease the pastry down the sides. Then pop in the oven for around 30 mins or until pastry in golden and puffed up.
Take out the oven and let cool. It's best served warm so either keep it in a warming oven or heat it up in the oven or on a hob just before serving.
To turn it out make sure you have a big plate thats not too shallow or the caramel will spill, place it over the top and with a quick movement flip it over. This recipe is fool proof and always comes out looking amazing, great for a dinner party!

River cafe polenta, almond and lemon cake

This week has been a bit up and down with the weather, lots of rain and then an absolute scorcher yesterday in the 30˚s. Yesterday was an especially good day because not only did I get a little bit less pasty but I also stood up on my surfboard about 10 times!! I did almost die about twice getting absolutely smashed by waves and ended up with my hair looking a bit like a loo brush but very happy!! Since the weather has been crappy I made a huge cake, and I think this could be my newest most favourite cake I have ever made. I have been trawling through my River cafe books and there is so much amazing stuff so since I have all kinds of great ingredients on my door step I am going to go nuts and try loads this month. Serves 12 450g unsalted butter, softened 450g caster sugar 450g ground almonds 2 teaspoons good vanilla essence 6 free range eggs zest of 4 lemons juice of 1 lemon 225g polenta flour or fine semolina 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 1/4 teaspoon of salt Preheat the oven to ...

I ♥ Biarritz

I recently returned from a girls surf trip to Biarritz. I say surf trip but it was more of a food, wine, shopping, lying horizontally on beaches and perving on lots of incredible male surfers torsos trip. We were six girls, and I think we scared the locals from our noisy behaviour talking loudly about all kinds of inappropriate subjects and drinking too much of the local Basque liquor Manzana, which they seem to just hand out and act surprised when one of you is spider pigging on the ceiling. Biarritz is located in the Basque region next to Spain so the food has a massive Spanish influence with loads of tapas bars and Spanish meats, plenty of seafood and salt cod around the place as well as the famous spice piment d'espelette and the delicious Gâteau Basque. We shopped in the market which is open everyday till 1pm to get all our food and cooked up a storm most evenings when we stayed in, however there are loads of really good restaurants and bars which we of course had to sample to...

Poached Pear Crumble

Lots of pears and apples around it being winter and all, so I got all english at the weekend and made crumble with poached pears. By poaching the fruit the crumble tastes pretty different and less sugary in my opinion, you could poach apples too I guess and I like to mix half poached with half not so you get a different texture and taste. Poaching liquid 100ml of caster sugar to 200ml of water...use depending on how many pears you poach and should cover all the pears in a big pan cinnamon stick 2 Star Anise 1 bit of peeled lemon rind 1 Pear per person (best to use harder pears not very ripe ones) Heat the poaching liquid and spices, lemon rind until the sugar has dissolved. Peel half the pears whole and place in the poaching liquid and cover with a round piece of parchment paper. Bring liquid to a low simmer and they should cook for about 20-30 mins depending on how ripe the pears were at the start. You should be able to stick a knife through. Take them off the heat and let them cool i...

Food In My Home

Search This Blog