Recipe: Whole Wheat Apple Tart and Bonus Recipe!

I promised I would share my journey on this blog, succeed or fail, and today I make good on that! My whole wheat apple tart didn't turn out quite how I imagined. I tried to combine a Rustic Apple Tart recipe that we've loved in the past with a naturally sweetened apple filling recipe, and a whole wheat pie crust recipe.  It went a little something like this:

Crust Ingredients:
3/4C Whole Wheat Flour
1/2C Rolled Oats
2t Granulated Sugar
1/3C Cold Butter
2-3T Very Cold Water

Crust Method:
Blend oats and in your food processor until oats are ground to a fine flour.
Cut butter into small portions an dadd to food processor as you continue to blend.
Slowly pour in very cold water and continue to blend until dough pulls together. Watch carefully so you don't add too much water!

Pat the dough into a disc shape and wrap in wax paper. Place in the fridge until cool and workable, about 1 hour.

Remove from fridge and roll out into a 10" circle... or whatever shape you can get it to make once its flat. This is as close as I could get to a circle, so I just rolled with it (he he, see what I did there?)

Filling Ingredients:
7 Large Local Apples*
1/2 Lemon
2 T Melted Butter

1/2C Real Maple Syrup

1t Cinnamon

3T flour

* I had some lovely little apples from the grounds of a local winery, but not quite as many as the recipe called for, so I used 5 small local apples, and 3 large apples from the grocery store. I ended up with way to much for this tart style pie, which ended up being a blessing. Read on!

Method:
Peel and slice your apples into a bowl, lightly tossing with the juice of 1/2 lemon to keep the apples from browning.

Combine melted butter with maple syrup and pour over sliced apples. In a separate bowl combine cinnamon and flour, and then sprinkle the mix over apples. Toss to coat.

Now, this is where things went south for me. Because of the wheat and oats in the crust as opposed to normal white flour, the crust was really prone to crumbling and difficult to move. In an ideal situation, this is how your method would continue:

Slide your pie crust circle onto a prepared cookie sheet or pie pan. Pour the apple mixture into the center (I had about twice as much as needed, which ended up being great actually. Keep reading...) and fold the edges of the crust up over the apples, leaving the center exposed.

Here is what it SHOULD look like:

(source)

Here is what MINE looked like:

Yikes. Cracked crust, overflowing apples... not pretty. I went ahead and put it in the oven anyways, but it was not what I had hoped for! I have made this recipe in the past with a white flour crust and it was delicious! My end result here was edible, but certainly not something fit for a thanksgiving table.

Pop in the oven at 400* for 20-45 minutes or until the crust is crisp and golden. Mine never quite got there before the apples started getting too browned.

BONUS RECIPE- Here's what I did with the extra apples! Even though this isn't a clean recipe, it turned out soooo yummy so I thought I would share!


Pour the apple mixture into ramekins (I had enough for 4), and set on a cookie sheet.
In a separate bowl, combine 4T of cold butter, 2-3T of white flour, 2T of white sugar, and a dash of Cinnamon. Use a fork or pastry cutter to combine into a crumbly mixture of flour & sugar coated butter pieces. Use this mixture to top the apples in the ramekins. You should have enough to cover the top of each container.

Put in a 400* oven for 15-20 minutes or until the top is golden brown. Serve hot with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

So, today wasn't a total success but not a complete loss either. I will definitely be using the naturally sweetened apple filling recipe again, but I think that all of my future pie crust endeavors will be white flour only! Hey, you can't win 'em all.

Thanks for checking in :) See you next week!

xo Allison