Tuesdays with Dorie: Parisian Tartlets

This is a very simple dessert - fruit on a round of puff pastry, with brown sugar and butter sprinkled on top before baking - therefore very open to interpretation. The recipe is for apple tartlets, though I didn't have any on hand, and honestly, all of the apples we've bought lately have been pretty flavorless. So I decided to save the apple until fall, and make something a little more seasonal. 

I settled on peach - I managed to find one that was ripe enough among a lot of unripe ones that I bought in anticipation of making Bear's Cobbler - and plum, because there was some good feedback about it on the TWD P&Q. 

I haven't been able to find pre-made organic puff pastry, so I decided to make my own. I was short on time, so wasn't sure I would be able to make it in the traditional manner. When I saw a link someone posted on the P&Q about a recipe for Nick Malgieri's quickest puff pastry, I thought I'd give it a shot.

The quickest puff pastry is all put together in a food processor, and it is indeed quick. I was very anxious to see if it would puff. 

The tartlets take minutes to put together, and I liked that there was a lot of freedom in the recipe. I put the butter and brown sugar on two of the tartlets, and left it off of two for my son. 

After about 15 minutes in the oven I checked on the tartlets, and there was a huge puddle of melted butter on the baking sheet. I was worried. I left them in for another 5, hoping that some puffing would occur, but no luck. 

Aside from the disappointment of the dough not puffing, these were delicious. Even the flat crust had a great buttery flavor. The tartlets were light and summery, and I'll definitely try them again. Maybe with a more traditional puff pastry recipe. 

Thanks to Jessica of My Baking Heart for picking this yummy yummy recipe. See everyone else's tartlets here.

*** UPDATE ***

While checking out the other TWD members' blogs this morning I saw this recipe for puff pastry on Holly's blog, Phemomenon. Her tartlets were beautiful and very puffy, so I decided to take a look at the recipe she used. It started out similarly to the one I used, but had several turns of rolling and folding - like a more traditional puff pastry recipe. After seeing this, I thought I might be able to resurrect my dough. So I pulled it out of the fridge, divided it into two balls, rolled them into rectangles, folded them like a letter, gave them a 1/4 turn, rolled and folded again, then refrigerated them for about 45 minutes, and repeated the steps. As you can see, it was a great success! So thanks to Holly for posting that recipe!