Sometimes I love to get creative in the kitchen and these French Apple Roses Mini Tarts are a perfect way for me to exercise my creative muscle! These tarts are so pretty – made with rolled up thin slices of apple. The best way to get thin slices of apple is to use a mandoline. You can cut the apples by hand if you don’t have a mandoline slicer, but the slices won’t be as uniformly thin.
Start by making a pastry base for the mini tarts. Slice apples into very thin strips and toss in lemon juice to stop them browning. Sprinkle apples with cinnamon sugar and allow them to rest at room temperature. Roll the apples up tightly – try not to stop once you have started rolling. Gently transfer the rolled apples into the pastry cups. Repeat until all of the pastry cups are filled. Bake in the oven. Before serving, dust with powdered icing sugar.
To make French Apple Roses Mini Tarts, you will need the following ingredients:
Place 1⅓ cups all-purpose flour, ¼ teaspoon of salt and 10 grams sugar in a large mixing bowl. Using your fingertips, rub ½ a cup of butter into the flour mixture until pea-sized crumbs form. Add ice water gradually and gather the crumbs to form a dough.
On a lightly floured work surface, knead the dough very briefly to form a ball. Wrap the dough with plastic food wrap and place it in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.
Preheat the oven to 350 °F. Grease and flour 8 cups of a standard cupcake pan.
Combine 20 grams of sugar with ¼ teaspoon of ground cinnamon.
Roll out the chilled dough on a lightly floured work surface. Cut hearts out of the rolled dough using a heart-shaped cookie cutter. Arrange four pieces of cut dough, with the top of the heart facing upward, into each of the 8 cups. Gently press the dough down at the base of each cup to ensure the bottom is fully covered. Place the cupcake pan in the fridge to chill.
Cut apples into very thin slices using a mandoline slicer. Transfer the sliced apple to a bowl and squeeze the juice from a lemon over top of the slices immediately.
Sprinkle the apple slices with cinnamon sugar and stir to coat evenly. Rest at room temperature for about 10 minutes until the apples soften and become pliable. If the slices are too stiff to bend, heat briefly in the microwave for 20 - 30 seconds.
Remove the chilled pastry cups from the refrigerator.
Arrange 10-12 apple slices lengthwise in a straight line, overlapping each other, on a piece of parchment paper. Starting at the end closest to you, gently and tightly roll the apples. Try not to stop once you have started to roll.
Gently transfer the rolled apple to one of the prepared pastry cups. Repeat the apple rolling process, until all of the pastry cups are filled.
Dust the individual tarts with the remaining 10 grams of sugar. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes until the crust is golden and the apples are cooked through.
Once cooked, remove the tarts from the oven. Leave to cool for 15 minutes in the tin before transferring carefully to a wire rack to cool.
Dust with powdered sugar before serving.
These French Apple Roses Mini Tarts are so cute and delicate. The apples really look like rose petals. If you make these, please come back and leave a review telling me what you think!
Vegetarian Recipes
