Car Free in Ann Arbor: Dutch Apple Taart

Dutch apple taart - cooling on the counter

We moved from The Netherlands to Canada when I was 6 years old. I very clearly remember my Dad being very excited to take me to a restaurant so that I could try "American apple pie" with ice cream. The Dutch serve apple taart with fresh whipped cream.

Now that I've had American apple pie many times since then, I was looking forward to my Mom's holiday visit so that I could once more have Dutch Apple Taart. Here is her recipe. Enjoy.

Crust/Dough
2 cups flour
1 cups sugar
1/2 lb butter at room temperature
2 eggs

Filling
8 medium apples
1 1/2 cups raisins
1/4 cup sugar mixed with a tsp of cinnamon

Almond Paste
150 grams raw almonds (OK to leave skin on, will make paste a bit darker) about 1 1/2 cups
150 grams sugar about 1 1/2 cups
Zest of one lemon or lime
1 whole egg

For the almond paste, grind almonds in a food processor or high speed blender. Mix ground almonds with sugar, lemon zest and egg until well combined. Set aside.

Prepare dough by chopping room temperature butter into tiny pieces in a large bowl. Using a pastry cutter, conbine with the flour and then sugar. Using a large wooden spoon, mix in 2 eggs. Form into a disk, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes until chilled.

In the meantime, Preheat oven to 350F.

Peel, core and thinly slice the apples. Mix in a large bowl with raisins and cinnamon sugar.

Take dough out of fridge and separate into thirds. Roll 2/3 of dough into a circle to fit a 9 inch spring form pan, spreading dough up the sides of the pan. It's OK if the dough breaks apart, just piece it together, it will smooth out when baking.

Press pan into dough to form the outline of the bottom crust

Cut out bottom crust and place in spring form pan

This may get messy and piecemeal - but that's OK

Continue adding dough to completely line the bottom and sides of pan

Add a layer of almond past on top of the dough.

This is about the right amount of paste so you'll have some left over paste for another use

Fill pan with apple mixture.

You may have some apples left over

Roll out remaining dough and cut into strip to form a lattice crust. Sprinkle with sugar

Place apple taart into a warm oven and bake for 60 minutes. If the top gets too brown, cover loosely with aluminum foil. Bake for an additional 15-30 minutes until brown and a bit bubbly.

Remove from oven and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Let rest for 10 minutes. Remove spring form ring and continue to cool on a rack.

Serve when completely cooled. I was able to remove taart from the bottom plate of the spring form pan and place on a serving dish. This seems like a hit and miss operation - sometimes it works and other times the cake cracks, but not today. For curiosity's sake, I placed the taart on my food scale - this Dutch Baby weighed in at 5 1/2 pounds! All of it good.