Not the book – frankenstein desserts.

I am a very, very lazy baker in that I don’t often start on huge projects. Sure, I can bake a ton of cookies at once, but I much prefer baking six and freezing 60 so I can avoid the oven when I’m craving cookies. (Then again, in our household cookie dough doesn’t survive for long.) I talk big, mostly of days where I got really bored and made 1,000+ cookies in one sitting, but that was when I worked a job where I had three days off a week. Grad school does not lend itself to the opportunity to go all-out in a home kitchen.

Most baking nowadays is one recipe, or some kind of mishmash of stuff I already made plus some effort to pretty it up. If I’m hosting a party, I’ll go all out on prep, but even then I’ll only make 4-5 recipes. I don’t mind, but sometimes I just long for having more time to create things besides axioms and postulates. I’m pretty sure at this point you can make a great correlation chart between my being frustrated by my research and the amount of cookies coming out of my kitchen.

I admit, I also dream of one day renting a space in a commercial kitchen, if only for a day or two, so I can relive my past glories. My 6 quart KitchenAid stand mixer, as proud and pretty as it is, is barely holding my projects in. I split doughs down to miniature amounts, and keep on watching craigslist in the hope that someone has a spare 10 quart that needs a home. The commissary kitchens in the area are all far enough from the house that I’d need to rent a zipcar, and I’d rather just bake at home all day.

(And yes, I’ve even considered building my own commercial kitchen. It is crazy challenging!)

Which brought me to an urge to make tarte tatin and staring at multiple pie-related recipes on my tabs list. A little of columns A, B, and C, along with overkill vanilla, and you get this gooey, luscious dessert in miniature. I love experimenting, especially in the kitchen.

It’s not the prettiest picture, but it was tasty. I only made six that day, as I was low on apples, but now I need an excuse to make a ton of them.

(This dessert is a finalist for the CakeSpy competition – send some voting love my way if you like it, and check out all the other amazing desserts!)

Pie Tatin
(Adapted from Smitten Kitchen, Food Nouveau, and Culinary Concoctions by Peabody)

Pie dough
2 1/2 cups (313 grams) all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting surfaces, dipping fork
2 tablespoons (25 grams) granulated sugar
1 teaspoon (4 grams) table salt
2 sticks (225 grams, 8 ounces, 16 tablespoons or 1 cup) unsalted butter, very cold, cubed
1/2 cup (118 ml) water, very cold

Cinnamon Roll Pie Crust
1 pie dough
4 tsp. Cinnamon, to taste
Sugar, to taste
Unsalted butter, melted

Tatin apples
3 firm apples (such as Golden, Granny Smith or Pink Lady)
Juice of half a lemon
½ t [100 g] sugar
3 tbsp [45 ml] water
1 vanilla pod, halved
¼ t [60 g] unsalted butter

Make your pie dough:
Whisk together flour, sugar and salt in the bottom of a large, wide bowl. Using a pastry blender, two forks or your fingertips, work the butter into the flour until the biggest pieces of butter are the size of small peas. Gently stir in the ice water with a rubber spatula until a shaggy mass forms. (Don’t worry if it’s not fully uniform in consistency.) Knead it with your hands a couple times to form the dough into a ball. Divide dough and wrap each half in plastic wrap and flatten a bit, like a disc. Chill in fridge for at least an hour or up to two days.

On a well-floured counter, roll out your pie dough pretty thin, a little shy of 1/8-inch thick. Lift and rotate your dough as you roll it, to ensure that it rolls out evenly and so you can be sure it’s not sticking in any place. Brush with butter and sprinkle evenly with cinnamon and sugar. Roll up tightly and slice into 1/2-inch rounds. Roll out the slices on a lightly floured surface until 1/4-1/8” thick, or wide enough in diameter to completely cover a muffin mold. Reserve in the fridge until ready to use.

For the tatin:
Preheat the oven to 350°F [175°C]. Lightly butter a non-stick muffin pan.

Peel the apples, core them, then cut each apple into 4 thick slices. Dip each slice in lemon juice on all sides. Using a round cookie cutter (I used a clean glass and a knife) slightly larger than the bottom of one of the muffin molds, cut out each apple round.

Split the vanilla bean lengthwise, then scrape off the seeds. In a medium saucepan, stir the sugar, water, and vanilla pod and scraped seeds together over medium heat. Stop stirring and let it slowly come to a boil. Continue to cook for about 5 minutes, or until the mixture is a light golden color. Swirl the pan occasionally so it caramelizes evenly. Once the caramel is light golden colored, remove from the heat and mix in the cubes of butter.

Place a large skillet over medium heat, then pour the caramel into this skillet. Don’t worry if your caramel has hardened a bit, it’ll melt as it’s heated again. Remove the vanilla bean and place the apple slices in the skillet, making sure they don’t overlap. Cook for 5 minutes, spooning the caramel over the slices a couple times as they cook.

Place one apple slice into the base of each muffin mold, then top with the caramel mixture. Place one round of pie crust gently on top of each apple. (As I’m sure you’ll have extra pie crust, bake them into cookies later!)

Bake for about 15 minutes, or until the pastry is puffed and lightly golden. Allow to stand for 10-15 minutes before removing from the muffin pan. Spoon any remaining caramel over the tartlets and serve warm.