TWD: Cran Apple Tart

The recipe for "Cran Apple Crisps" (baked out of order as all my Nov. TWD recipes are) was chosen by The Repressed Pastry Chef. Check out her blog for the original recipe. I happened to put my own twist on the crisp, making it into a tart instead of a spoon dessert. I'll take any excuse to use my 9" fluted tart pan. I love that thing. A simple all-purpose pie crust filled with Dorie's apple cranberry filling and topped with her crisp topping. Because the tart pan is so shallow I used only about 2/3 of the recipe (2.5 apples instead of 4, the rest scaled accordingly). I froze the (delicious) extra streusel in a ZipLock container for easy to throw together fruit crisps or muffin toppings in a flash.



When I first put this into the oven the filling was piled so high it looked like an anthill, but thankfully the apples cooked down and in the end it was just the perfect height. Note: this bubbles a lot! I should've known better and put foil under my pan to save myself a lot of sticky puddles in my oven. Served at room temperature the next day it was even better than hot out of the oven. It was a beautiful medley of sweet and tart with contrasting textures from fresh and dried cranberries and bits of coconut in the topping. Nobody could guess there was coconut but when I told them their reaction was: "ahhh.... so THAT'S what it is". They knew something in there tasted different (in a good way!) but couldn't put their finger on it.