A recipe: Upside-Down Caramel Apple Crumble

Like a lot of Americans, I’ve been anxious lately. When I’m anxious, I let off steam by serial baking. Lots of folks find release this way. My particular version of it tends to focus on a single recipe; I pull it apart, finesse every ingredient, every step. I bake the same thing over and over and over again, slight differences every time, until I deem it perfect.

The last time I felt this anxious was 2020, beginning with the start of the pandemic in the late winter, and ending with the presidential election in the fall. That year I had 20 pounds of blueberries in my freezer in which, by March, I had barely made a dent. My husband and I ate a lot of blueberries in those first months when things were so uncertain and scary and going to the grocery store seemed like a unnecessary risk when there was perfectly good food in the freezer. My serial baking project was a flawless, delightfully simple blueberry tart. We ate three a week. I’m surprised we didn’t turn blue. But we also didn’t get COVID. Whether that was from the blueberries or avoiding the grocery store is a point of debate only within the walls of our own household.

Twenty twenty-four has been a banner year for apples, and so it only makes sense that my baking project this fall has focused on a recipe involving those. For this tart-crumble hybrid I take the elegant simplicity of a French tarte tatin and Americanize it somewhat by skipping the pie crust (who’s got time for that?), and instead making a nutty, nubbly crumble “topping” that caramelizes beautifully under the broiler to ultimately become the bottom crust of the dessert. I plan to bring it to a friend’s watch-party tonight. I hate to think that this will be the last time I make it, but if things go pear-shaped, I’ll need to take up a new project as this one has served it’s purpose.

Ingredients

• 4-7 apples peeled, cored, and quartered top to bottom, or enough to fit snugly into a 10-inch skillet. *see note

• 12 tablespoons butter, divided

• 1-1/4 cup granulated sugar, divided

• 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour (preferably freshly-milled)

• 1/2 cup rolled oats

• 1/2 cup roughly chopped walnuts

Method

1. Heat your oven to 400°F. Set a rack in the upper third of the oven.

2. Over a medium flame, melt 4 tablespoons of the butter in a 10-inch skillet.

3. While the butter is melting, mix together 1/2 cup sugar, whole wheat flour, rolled oats, and walnuts in a small bowl. Pour in the melted butter and stir until a crumbly mixture forms. Set aside.

4. In the same skillet, melt the other 8 tablespoons of the butter over a medium flame. Add the remaining sugar and cook until the mixture is buff-colored and uniformly curdled looking. The sugar will not be melted.

5. Place the apples in the skillet on their flat sides, forming concentric circles. Cook for 3-4 minutes, then gently flip the apples to their other flat side. Don’t worry if things don’t look perfect. Cook for another 3-4 minutes then remove from the heat. Sprinkle the crumble mixture over the entire surface of the apples, taking care to press into the nooks and crannies.

6. Slide the pan into the hot oven and bake for 20 minutes.

7. After 20 minutes, check that the apples are cooked to your desired softness, then turn your broiler on high and cook the apples until the crumble is a deep brown. Remove from the oven.

8. Run a paring knife along the top inside of the pan, releasing the gooey sugar from where it is stuck. Place a platter (the circumference of which is wider than the rim of your skillet) over the top of the pan. Using hot pads (I use my ove’ gloves) and extreme care, flip the tart over, and lift off the skillet. If any apples have stuck, you can scrape them out and fill in any holes on the surface of the crumble.

9. Allow the tart to cool from molten lava to warm, then serve with good vanilla ice cream.

*For the crumble in the photo, I used 2 large Spencer apples and 3 small Golden Russets. If you can find these hard, spicy, patina’d apples, I highly recommend them for this dish.