I ran across several blogs with a recipe for the Alsatian apple tart featured in Dorie Greenspan’s book. It seemed simple enough. So I just had to make it.
“As American as apple pie,” people say. But apple tart? Who would’ve thought to make such a thing?
Kristi was preparing a salad for the neighborhood progressive dinner party. It was a wonderful excuse to visit other people’s homes, snoop through their medicine cabinets, and gossip about who was having an extramarital affair with whom. It also helped that she was a hot Asian woman. Men and women alike would tell her anything and everything. Must be the eyes.
As she was slicing up some apples that would add some crunch and sweetness to her salad, she heard a knock on her door. She wiped off her hands and opened the door, only to find a beautiful Asian man standing there. Tall, handsome, spiked hair, shirt bulging from the biceps… before they exchanged a single word, she could feel a bit of moisture. And that wasn’t coming from the apples.
“Oh hi,” he said in his deep but friendly voice. Her heart skipped nearly enough beats to be considered an arrhythmia. “I’m Jason. I’m new in the neighborhood, and I somehow got talked into making the dessert course. Word around the block is that you’re the woman to ask about desserts?”
“Oh why yes, yes I am,” she stammered. She never stammered. Not even when making presentations about global implications of advanced magnetohydrodynamics at an international symposium of magnetohydrodynamicists. But in front of this gorgeous hunk of a man, she was completely nervous.
“So I have this awesome recipe for a tart crust,” he said. A man who’s hot and bakes? What woman’s romance novel was this scene from? Kristi could hardly keep her balance, her knees were literally buckling. “And I was conflicted about what I should put into it.”
Her mind was turning to mush. This must be what it feels like to be a teenage boy seeing porn for the first time, she thought to herself. “I… um… let me think for a minute,” she said breathlessly. “Do you want to come in and have a drink?” she offered, stalling for time. Let’s be honest, she really wanted to bone him right then and there like a wildebeest in heat, but she still had some restraint.
“Sure,” Jason said, as he strode into her living room. Kristi had to look down at her dress to make sure there were no wet spots. The dress passed the moisture test, so she went over to her cabinet of liquor.
“What do you like?” she asked. He said he liked whiskey on the rocks. A whiskey man, she thought to herself, as she simultaneously imagined him naked. Not yet, Kristi, she had to tell herself. You don’t even know if he’s rich. No, stop. Really.
Kristi carried over the old-fashioned glass filled with ice and some of her best whiskey. Jason graciously accepted it in his strong yet soft hands and took a sip. He smiled at her and she melted like an ice cube shot by a hot laser beam. “So about that tart…” Jason said, after he had loosened up a bit from the whiskey.
“Oh the tart!” Kristi panicked a bit. For the last two minutes, she had just been thinking how to get him into her pie instead of what he could put into his tart. She glanced around the room furtively, desperately seeking an answer that wasn’t there. She suddenly thought of the apples she was slicing earlier. “How about apples?” she suggested, hoping he would find her answer hot enough to pounce on her.
His eyes lit up like a switchboard at an internet company whose servers all crashed simultaneously. “Yessss,” he moaned, increasing Kristi’s misting to a small trickle. “That’s it, apples! Perfect for this time of year. Thanks so much Kristi, I’m looking forward to seeing you at my place for dessert later.”
Did he wink? Or was she delusional from the lust overcoming her body? “I’m really looking forward to it too!” she said, almost too eagerly. Tone it down, she had to tell herself.
Jason finished up his whiskey and left her house. The next two hundred minutes were a blur. All Kristi could focus on was Jason. His smile, his biceps, his everything. She kept trying to look down at his package, but he just happened to be one of those cool guys who didn’t tuck in his shirt, leaving the treasure room’s shape a mystery. Why was she so focused on that area? She blamed her parents for denying her access to men until she was eighteen. Damn traditional Asian parents.
She finally found herself at Jason’s place for the dessert course. His apple tart looked beautiful, as beautiful as his chiseled face. As the night wore on, people retired to their homes, and soon only Kristi remained in Jason’s place. She asked how he managed to get this wonderful, custardy texture surrounding the apples.
Jason thought back to how it all came together. After he left Kristi’s place, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. He was hoping that she didn’t notice the large tent in his pants. Thankfully, he always left his shirt untucked for just such an occasion. The way her sexy smile lit up the whole room, how her long, smooth legs went on forever, how her breasts were just the right size to cup without feeling like overfilled water balloons, she just had it all. When he got home, all he could think about was banging her like a feral beast. Being a biologist, he couldn’t help but visualize their bodily fluids intermingling inside her.
So naturally, the thing that popped into his head next was heavy cream. Thick, white liquid pouring down all over the apples, enveloping them in a sea of rich, velvety goodness. He mixed together some heavy cream and eggs, along with some sugar and vanilla extract, and poured the mixture all over a bed of sliced apples that he had arranged like the petals of a chrysanthemum. How positively Georgia O’Keeffe this arrangement was.
In the middle of his story, Kristi had become so hot that she couldn’t stand it anymore. Like Mount Vesuvius erupting from the built-up pressure, she leapt into the air and tackled him. Jason, taken by surprise, was knocked to the floor, right onto the soft rug in his living room. It appealed to the masochistic side of him, being tackled by a hot woman as if she were the star quarterback of the opposing team. Except there weren’t the annoying twenty other players on the field with them.
She urgently ripped open his shirt like a child ripping open a Christmas present. The gift was his chiseled chest, and she was all too eager to rub her hands all over it. He, in turn, lifted her dress over her head. It came off effortlessly, as did her bra soon after. He could feel her wetness through her panties. She pressed her crotch into his, grinding into his rock-hard member. Such a tease, both of them thought, as they passionately kissed each other with their lower halves still covered.
Jason’s pants were soon on the couch, along with his boxers, and her panties were tossed carelessly aside. Whoever made up that stereotype about Asian men hadn’t seen Jason naked, Kristi thought to herself. She gripped his turgidity with such intense eagerness that heart nearly leapt out of her chest. At the same time, his fingers reached into her vagina, his fingers darting with such precision to the right spots that it was as if they had minds of their own. But the puppets had no autonomy; it was the puppetmaster’s dexterity and experience that were guiding the way to the holy land of the G-spot.
Mutual intemperance led to prompt penetration. The thrusts were long and deep, their moans loud and primal. They were both fulfilling the needs that hadn’t been filled in months. Flesh against flesh, fluids intermingling, this was like water for crops dying of thirst. Their most basic needs met, Jason and Kristi released their tensions into each other simultaneously, as their bodies went limp and their moaning stopped. They had achieved happiness after bonding over apple tart, right on top of this thousand-dollar rug.
I don’t know why I imagined an Asian couple. Maybe I just really want to be with someone Asian right now. Well, enough about me, onto the recipe. I used the same tart crust I always use, but of course you can use whatever recipe you like.
Alsatian Apple Tart
Crust
1 cup flour
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
Filling
1 pound medium-size firm sweet apples, such as Golden Delicious
3/4 cup heavy cream
6 tablespoons sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
powdered sugar (for dusting)
- Preheat oven to 375F.
- Mix the flour, brown sugar, and butter together in a bowl, and then press into a 9-inch tart pan.
- Peel, halve, and core the apples. Slice the apples into thin slices, and arrange them in the tart shell.
- Whisk together the heavy cream, sugar, egg, egg yolk, and vanilla extract.
- Pour the heavy cream mixture over the apples.
- Bake the tart at 375F for 50 to 55 minutes, until the custard is set. A knife inserted into the custard should come out clean.
- Transfer the tart to a rack and allow it to cool.
- Dust the top with powdered sugar.
I liked this recipe because it’s quite easy; the most labor-intensive part is preparing the apples.
The tart crust mixture of flour, brown sugar, and butter.
I then pressed that mixture into the tart pan.
Some sliced up Golden Delicious apples, arranged in the tart shell. Arranging rigid slices of apple in a round tart in a pretty fashion is harder than it looks. At least it was hard for me, a person with very little dexterity.
The custard mixture of heavy cream, sugar, egg, and vanilla extract.
That gets poured over the apples, which just makes it look kind of wet.
After about 50 minutes, it’s done. Some of the tips of the apple slices got burnt, but I think that’s just inevitable.
Then some powdered sugar on top. The whiteness threw off my camera’s white balance because I just really don’t know how to fiddle with that stuff.
I liked this tart a lot, it was simple to make, and the rich custard goes really well with the tart taste of the apples.