August 16, 2006

How to Not Satisfy a Craving

Yesterday, I got it into my head that I was going to make tarte tatin but with peaches. We had peaches and I knew that I had a recipe somewhere for this exact thing. I became a woman possessed. Even though I got home late, I was still insisting that I make my tarte. After a delicious dinner, I did some quick cook book research while chanting "peach tarte tatin peach tarte tatin", to discover that my tarte was in The Last Course, which I have previously had a few interesting experiments with. And although I may be crazy enough to start making a cake after 8 pm, in no way am I sufficiently insane to start making the puff pastry required for this particular recipe, yet.

I remembered my favorite tarte tatin recipe and though that if I could tweak it a bit, that it would work. Uh, not so much. What I ended up doing was cooking the peaches in the oven with caramel as Claudia recommends but in one large cake instead of individual ones and baking it with pastry on top with the instructions from the B.A. January 2006 recipe (that they do not have available on-line otherwise I would link to it). This, as you can well imagine, did not, in any way whatsoever, turn out well.


I planned on taking a picture to share but it was ugly, really ugly. Here is a drawing instead. It's surprisingly accurate.

The caramel turned to black tar and it all stuck to the pan and I am not looking forward to doing the dishes today. The peaches and pastry were good but the "sauce" was a hard, sticky, burnt mess. Yes, we ate it anyway. We couldn't let those peaches go to waste.

3 Comments:

Blogger ASK said...

I think you should draw more of your cooking, especially when it goes poorly.

Could you help me sometime on Sunday with the counter? Gracias.

August 18, 2006 5:04 PM  
Blogger Meredith said...

I never said that I was the artist, just that this was an artist's representation. I can't draw that well. I'll have to keep the "artist's" contact info on hand, just in case such a horrible incident occurs again.

August 18, 2006 6:06 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I can empathize with your drawing! I dont know how to post a picture on your blog, but I will send you a picture to your gmail account. I tried to make chocolate chip cookies last night. Easy? Not so easy. The batter was perfect (yes, I admitt it...I am one of those people who tastes the batter) but I couldnt get a good temperature on my little gas oven. At least, I think that was the problem. They were meant to bake at 375 F, which is 190 C. Well, my oven only lowers to 210 C. Hmmmm. So I set it on the lowest setting, of course. The first batch took 20 mins to bake and all ran together. Looked something like your drawing, but in brown and black. I raised the heat to 220 for the next to batches. Pale in the middle, crispy on the sides. 16 minutes. The final batch took 9 minutes at 250 C (Yikes) These I made bigger, and I had chilled the dough for about 30 mins. Perfect inside..soft and chewy, but slightly burnt on the outside. Hmmm...more experimentation is necessary. Suggestions appreciated.
-GauchaGuapa

September 17, 2006 12:12 PM  

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