Upside-down pie with plums

Historical reference

Tarte Tatin is considered a classic pie. This inside-out product was born as a result of an error, like many great things.

At the end of the 21st century, the Tatin sisters ran one of the small hotels in France. One day, when there were a lot of guests and very little time for everything, Stephanie Tatin was busy in the kitchen, rushing to serve the guests dessert - a signature apple pie. She put the caramelized fruit filling into the mold, forgetting the base layer of dough first. At her own risk, she covered the top of the fruit with it and baked it.

The hotel guests were delighted with how it turned out - the filling was caramelized and slightly stretched with melting threads, while the dough layer was not saturated with juice, but remained thin and crispy. From that moment on, the victorious march of the pie around the world began. They began to make it both sweet and not, changing the dough and types of fillings.

Modernity

The mistake that turned out to be a success for the Tatin sisters is being repeated everywhere by modern chefs. For example, tarte Tatin is now perceived as one of the variants of a more general group of baked goods, which is based on the principle of laying out. This product is called “upside-down pie” (with apples and more). Its main charm is that the filling placed on the bottom releases juice and caramelizes in it, minimally saturating the dough lying on top, because gravity is heartless. Thanks to this, the structure of the coating is preserved, it does not get wet and retains its shape.

In this article we will look at several recipes for such pies that will help both diversify your daily diet and please your loved ones on holiday.

Classic Tarte Tatin

This wonderful upside-down apple pie is prepared according to the following recipe:

sugar - 210 grams;
butter - 90 grams;
apples (sweet) - 1 kg;
puff pastry (can be purchased) - 1 large sheet;
vanilla sugar - 10 grams;
ground cinnamon - 1/4 teaspoon.
Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Apples must be peeled and cored. Cut each apple into 4 equal parts.

Pour sugar (set aside a couple of tablespoons) and vanilla sugar into a thick-bottomed saucepan with a diameter of 22 cm. Place it over medium heat and heat until amber in color, without disturbing.

Remove the resulting caramel from the heat and let it thicken a little. Place apple slices on it, placing them edgewise. Place pieces of butter on the apples, sprinkle everything with sugar and cinnamon.

Roll out the layer of puff pastry so that it can cover the saucepan. Next, you need to cut a circle with a diameter of 24 cm from the rest, cover the apples on top with it and tuck the edges - for this layered upside-down pie to be a success, the dough should lie tightly against the fruit.

Bake for 40 minutes until golden brown. Let cool.

To remove the cake from the mold without any problems, you should follow the following algorithm of actions:

Place your palm on the pie.
Press gently but firmly.
Roll the pie with your palm.
Warm the pie slightly in a frying pan;
Press the pie with your palm again and pour off all the caramel.
Place a larger flat plate on top of the pie and flip it over quickly.

That's all! Thanks to this, the upside-down apple pie, the recipe for which we gave, does not become deformed.

Boil the drained caramel and glaze the apples with it.

Now you can cut it and treat it to your loved ones, adding a scoop of vanilla ice cream to all this splendor.

Recipe for “Plum Changeling”:

Wash the plums, divide them into two halves and remove the pits.

For caramel, take 3/4 cup sugar and melt in butter.

Stir continuously until bubbles appear. Caramel is ready. Remove from heat.

Place the plum slices tightly into the caramel, lightly pressing them to the bottom of the pan.

Dough: mix flour, salt and baking powder. It is better to sift through a sieve for fluffiness.

Separately mix sugar, butter, vanilla sugar, egg, milk.

Combine flour with egg and milk mixture.

Alternative for a snack

Tatin can be unsweetened if desired. For example, one of the most successful options is tarte Tatin with tomatoes:

butter - 30 grams;
olive oil - 4 tbsp. spoons;
medium-sized tomatoes - 7 pcs.;
puff pastry - 1 large sheet;
balsamic vinegar - to taste;
basil for serving.

This tart is prepared in the same way as upside-down apple pie, the main differences are as follows:

the filling consists of halves of tomatoes, which are stewed in a mixture of oils for a third of an hour;
cinnamon is replaced with balsamic vinegar.

Plum shifter with caramel

Plum upside-down pie can be prepared using the following ingredients:

flour – 1.5 tbsp;
butter – 100 g;
eggs – 2 pcs.;
plums – 12-15 pcs.;
kefir – ½ tbsp.;
salt – 1/3 tsp;
ground cinnamon – ½ teaspoon;
granulated sugar – 270 g;
baking powder - ½ tbsp. l.;

You can prepare a delicious upside-down pie in your kitchen according to the following diagram:

First you need to make caramel. To do this, dissolve 50 grams of butter in a frying pan. This should be done over low heat. When the butter begins to foam, add sugar. The amount of sweet sand should be a little more than half a glass. When the substance acquires a honey hue, remove it from the stove.
Cut the fruit in half and remove the seeds. Place the resulting pieces on the caramel until the sweet mass has cooled.
Preparing the dough should begin by beating sugar and salt with the egg. Pour kefir into the resulting substance, continuing to whisk.
Cut the butter into pieces and add to the whipping mixture, when it becomes fluffy and homogeneous. Beating must be continued until the fat is dispersed in the mixture of eggs and kefir.
Pour a glass of flour into the dough mixture, which is best sifted first. Stir first with a spoon, then again with a mixer.
At the end of cooking, season the dough with cinnamon and add baking powder.
Place the future base of the pie on top of the plum layer, spreading it out so that the pieces of fruit are covered.
Place the dish with the dessert in a preheated oven (180 degrees). Plum pastries should take about 25 minutes to cook.
Remove the finished dish from the container, turning it over so that the plums are on top.

Sponge cake upside down

As we said earlier, you can use any dough for this pie. Not everyone likes puff pastry, so the recipe below is based on a butter sponge cake. The choice fell on it because it itself is tender and juicy, and this is important, since the dough, due to the location of the filling, is practically not saturated with juices. So, a tropical upside-down pie (you can also make it with apples in a pinch):

eggs - 3 pcs.;
sugar - 300 grams;
butter - 200 grams;
flour - 150 grams;
baking powder - a pinch;
vanilla - a pinch;
salt - a pinch;
water - 4 tbsp. spoons;
lemon juice - 2 tbsp. spoons;
ripe bananas - 3 pcs.;
passion fruit - 3 pcs.

Use a one-piece mold with a diameter of 22-23 cm with a thick bottom.

Ingredients:

Recipe No. 1.

Dough according to Irina Kutova’s recipe, Cooking at Home website.

2 eggs;
150 g sugar (3/4 cup 200 g);
65 ml milk;
100-120 g butter;
130 g flour (1 glass without a slide);
2 teaspoons baking powder;
Vanillin on the tip of a teaspoon.

For filling:

30 g butter;
150 g sugar;
Plums - to cover the bottom of the mold, 400-500g.

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Combine water and half the sugar in a saucepan and heat until it turns a beautiful amber color. Remove from heat, add lemon juice and pour caramel into the bottom of the pan, distributing it as evenly as possible.

Rub the passion fruit pulp through a sieve, discarding the seeds. Set aside 1/3, add the banana cut into pucks to the rest of the puree. Place the fruit mixture on top of the caramel.

Melt the butter and cool.

Beat the eggs with the remaining sugar until fluffy and stiff. Add vanilla, carefully pour in the oil, stirring with a spoon from top to bottom.

Sift the flour and baking powder into a bowl with the egg-butter mixture and mix again by hand.

Spread the dough over the fruit and bake for 40-45 minutes. Readiness can be determined by testing it with a dry toothpick. Remove as you would for the apple upside-down pie.

How to make plum pie from puff pastry

If you have plums and ready-made puff pastry in the refrigerator, then in just an hour you can bake a magnificent dessert for tea. This recipe is very simple, convenient and suitable even for novice housewives. So, we will need the following ingredients: half a kilo of plums, 350 grams of natural yoghurt, 250 grams of ready-made puff pastry, three tablespoons of starch and the same amount of sugar, one egg.

We wash the plums, peel them and cut them into slices. Combine yogurt with egg, starch and sugar, and then mix until smooth. Roll out the puff pastry and place it in the mold, forming sides. Place fruit slices on top. Fill our future layered plum pie with the yoghurt-egg mixture and place the mold in an oven preheated to 190 degrees for 40-50 minutes. Ready baked goods are best served warm. Bon appetit!

Some turned out to have an easy-going character, while others were a little capricious - the filling stuck to the pan - but, despite the cute quirks, the pies were invariably eaten with a bang! The same thing happened with the upside-down plum pie - but I had to tinker with it!

I baked it three times. The first two - last year, and then, when I decided to take a little break from experiments, and the plum season was over, I left this matter until next summer. The pies turned out amazingly tasty - so the son claimed, once again holding out his hand for more - but almost all the plums stuck to the bottom of the pan and remained there when the pie was turned over. The sugar, butter and plum juice turned into caramel as they baked, and the fruit stuck merrily to the bottom of the pan in which I cooked the pie. Of course, this did not affect the taste, but I wanted to find a version of the recipe that would make both the taste and appearance of the pie almost perfect.

And so, on the third attempt, a recipe for an upside-down pie with plums, which can be easily removed from the mold, was found. In most variations, it is suggested to heat sugar and butter in a mold, then place the plum halves cut side down and fry for a couple of minutes, and then pour in the dough and bake. That's when the juice caramelizes. And so that the plums do not stick, we omit the moment of heating the sugar and butter, put the plums in the mold with the cut side up (the juice does not flow to the bottom of the mold) and fill it with dough. I thank Elena Ilyina for this advice - it was with this technology that the pie turned out the way I wanted. And the plum upside-down recipe itself turned out to be prefabricated: the second time I made the dough the same as in an Italian pear pie, the filling was two types of plums. By the way, this is also an important point. For the pie, it is better to take strong, not too juicy plums, from which the pit can be easily separated, ideally the Hungarian variety. Because we also have round yellow-lilac plums, juicy and sweet. So, where there were round fruits (in the middle), they gave more juice and the pie stuck a little. And the long plums behaved perfectly.