I just moved from California to Michigan for grad school this year, so it’s been so much fun to experience my first actual fall. I’d never gone apple picking or had apple cider with fresh warm donuts before (California is more of a strawberry/cherry/blueberry picking kind of place), so of course when I went apple picking for the first time I got a little too excited and ended up with waaaaaaaaay too many apples!

Whenever I have too much of an ingredient in my kitchen, my solution is always to bake something with it. I ended up making apple streusel muffins, apple jam, and even some apple grilled cheeses (which were surprisingly good!!) but my favorite recipe is this French apple tart recipe. I made two of them  because I loved the taste so much!

This recipe is adapted from this Williams Sonoma Apple Tart recipe, but I used store-bought pie crust instead of making my own tart dough because 1) I’m too lazy and 2) grad student budget doesn’t have room for buying fancy things like tart pans XD

Ingredients

1 9″ pie crust

Frangipane filling (sweet almond paste)

3/4 cup blanched almonds, lightly toasted

1/3 cup sugar

1/8 tsp. salt

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted

Apple filling

2.5 Apples, cored, halved lengthwise and sliced 1/4 inch thick

1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

1 Tbsp sugar

3 Tbsp apricot preserves (for glaze)

Recipe

1) Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees

2) Use a food processor to blend the almonds, 1/3 cup sugar and the salt until the almonds are finely ground. Add the egg, vanilla extract, and melted butter and blend until you have a thick paste

3) Pour the frangipane into the pie shell and smooth it out with a spatula/spoon

4) Toss the apple slices in the lemon juice. Place the first layer of apples on top of the frangipane in a spiral.

5) Keep adding layers of apples until you’ve covered the whole tart or run out of apple slices!

6) Sprinkle 1 tbsp of sugar over everything and stick the tart in the oven for 1 hour.

7) Once the tart is cooled, warm up the apricot preserves until they’re syrupy and brush them onto the apples