Easy as Pie — No, Easier
November 1st, 2009 by Elizabeth Phillips
The expression “easy as pie” made no sense to me until I started making pies. Because my mom bought frozen crusts for her absolutely delicious streusel-topped apple pie, I assumed that pastry-making was the province of talented professionals. But really, anyone with a food processor or mixer can make a decent piecrust, and with a little practice, you and your kids can do it by hand, too.
Tarts are even easier. You whip up a batch of pastry and store it in the fridge or freezer. Then, when your kids are wailing that there’s nothing to eat, slice up some fruit and get out the rolling pin. The kids can bang it into pliability and roll it into a roughly circular shape.
The key to success in pastry is keeping ingredients and then the dough from getting warm and sticky. But this dough is pretty forgiving of the delays that getting your kids in on the action will entail, and it tastes great.
This is the time of year for pears or apples. Slice your fruit thin so it cooks as fast as the crust. The advantage of using pears is that you don’t have to peel them. But make sure they are at a perfect stage of firm ripeness, lest they fail to soften and you end up with a crispy-pear tart. Apples, sliced thin, soften readily, but peel them unless you don’t mind that tougher skin.
Finally, don’t let me shame you into making your own. I do it because it’s fun and yields the best flavor. However, you can buy frozen crust, remove it from its tin, and let your kids roll it out. Or, if you’re feeling flush, splurge on puff pastry. It’s a lot more expensive than making your own, but it’s easy to work with and the results are spectacular. You’ll have light, flaky pastry around your fruit.
Crust
Adapted from Mark Bittman’s blog, Bitten
Make this up to a couple of days before you plan to bake your tart. You can store dough in the fridge, or freeze it for a week.
• One generous cup (5 oz.) all-purpose flour, plus some to dust on work surface
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 stick cold unsalted butter (I keep mine in the freezer), cut into quarters lengthwise and then into cubes (this is another task that a kid can do with a bench scraper or even a table knife)
• 1 egg yolk
Combine flour, salt, and sugar in a food processor; pulse once or twice. Add 8 tablespoons of butter and turn on machine; process until butter and flour are blended and mixture looks like cornmeal, about 10 seconds. Add egg yolk and 2 tablespoons ice water and pulse machine on and off a couple of times. Pick some up and squeeze — if it doesn’t hold together, add another tablespoon of water. Dump the dough into a medium shallow bowl and press into a cohesive disc. Turn onto plastic wrap or waxed paper, and freeze dough for about 15 minutes (or refrigerate for 30 minutes or more) to ease rolling. (You can also refrigerate for a day or two, or freeze for a week.)
The old-fashioned way: Stir flour, salt and sugar together in a large, wide bowl. Add cubed butter and toss until coated with flour. Using fingertips only, begin pressing bits of butter into the flour, almost as if you’re snapping your fingers in slow motion through the butter and flour. The object is to create lots of flour-butter disks, until all the butter is integrated into the flour, but not perfectly mixed. You should still have some floury lumps of butter. Then proceed to work in the egg yolk and water as above.
Assembling and Baking Your Tart
Adapted from Julia Child’s The Way to Cook
• 2-4 apples or pears, depending on size
• ¼ cup sugar
• Glaze made from 1 cup apricot jam, pressed through a sieve and heated with 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1 recipe pastry, above
• 2 tablespoons additional melted butter, if desired
Remove pastry from fridge or freezer and allow to soften slightly. Lightly flour an ample work surface. Place the disc of dough on the work surface and encourage your kids to beat it gently with a rolling pin to soften it up.
If you’re new to pastry, do most of the rolling yourself, always working from the center outwards, shifting the dough so that you proceed evenly. Avoid pressing down at the edges, as that will make the dough thin and stick to the surface. Don’t worry about making a perfect circle, but try to get it pretty evenly thin and around 12” in diameter. Place your circle on a parchment or waxed-paper covered baking sheet in the fridge or out on the porch to chill while you prep your fruit.
Halve and core fruit (a melon baller makes coring easy and fun for older kids). Quarter and peel, if necessary, then slice thin (about ¼”).
Preheat oven to 375°. Get crust and sprinkle with sugar. Arrange apple slices in a pretty pattern, or just dump them on, leaving a rim of 2-3 inches. Brush fruit generously with apricot glaze, then take edges of the pastry and fold up to partially cover fruit, pleating as you go. Brush pastry with melted butter and bake 30 minutes or until pastry is golden and the fruit is tender.