Banana Tarte Tatin

Last night I wanted to make some easy dessert and I remembered this recipe for Banana Tarte Tartin from Saveur magazine from last year. The recipe is available online and is easy to follow.  Here is how I made the tart.

Ingredients:
3⁄4 cup of sugar
4 tablespoons of unsalted butter
1 teaspoon of orange zest
1⁄4 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
3 ripe bananas, halved lengthwise
1  9”x9” sheet of frozen puff pastry, Aussie Bakery brand, thawed. It is sold in many supermarkets in Seattle.

I preheated oven to 400F. First step is to make caramel sauce. I combined sugar and butter in a small pot. I kept mixing sugar and butter in a pot, first on a low heat and then gradually increasing heat to medium high. I made sure not to burn sugar by continually stirring the mixture. I followed instructions and continued cooking the mixture until it was deep golden brown color. The process took about 10-12 minutes. I removed the caramel from heat and stirred in orange zest and cinnamon. Next I poured caramel mixture into a round glass ovenproof pie baking dish and spread it to cover the bottom.

After that I laid bananas cut side up over the caramel. I needed only 3 bananas and cut some pieces as needed to fit in the baking dish.

Following the instructions I unfolded puff pastry sheet over bananas, trimming edges of pastry to fit the dish, and tucked in the edges. I used a fork to prick pastry sheet. I put tart into the oven, put timer for 30 minutes and forgot about it.

After about 20 minutes I checked on tart to see that it was cooking and right at 30 minutes I took the tart out. Just like the recipe said the pastry was puffed and golden brown and caramel was bubbling around the edges of the dish. I let tart cool off for couple minutes.

OK, so this was the tricky part. To serve, you need to place a serving platter or baking sheet upside down over the baking dish and carefully invert tart onto platter or sheet. It takes patience but I did it!

The last step is to cut tart and serve it with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. I ate it just by itself and it was delicious. The next step is to make this tart with apples – a timeless classic!