Song-worthy Apple Tarts 1.10 Forgiveness and Stuff Part 2!

“Well, what about the apple tarts? You wait all year for those apple tarts.” “I can live without the apple tarts.” “You’ve made up songs after eating five of them with lyrics that contradict that last statement.”

Ingredients:

For the crust: *Updated recipe*

• ½ cup unsalted butter, cubed

• 1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

• ¼ tsp salt

• ¼ cup ice cold water

For the apple filling:

• ¼ cup butter

• ¼ cup granulated sugar

• ¼ cup brown sugar

• 3 small gala apples, peeled and diced

• ½ tsp vanilla

• 2 oz bourbon or whiskey

Cinnamon for the topping

Directions:

1. Start by making the dough. Place the butter in a small bowl and dust with about ½ tbsp of the flour. Place the butter into the freezer for 1 hour to make sure it’s really cold.

2. Meanwhile, in a large mixing bowl, combine the rest of the flour and salt.

3. Add the cold butter to the flour mixture and using your hands, combine until the mixture is just combined. There should still be full chunks of butter.

4. Add the ice-cold water to the mixture and using your hands or a dough hook if it’s too cold to handle, combine until a shaggy dough forms. It will be crumbly, but you don’t want it to be too wet.

5. On a lightly floured surface, form your dough into a large ball. Be careful not to overwork the dough. Wrap the dough and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

6. While the dough chills preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

7. Use a cookie cutter or a wine glass to cut circles out of the dough. This recipe will make 12 tarts if you use a regular muffin tin or 24 if you use a mini muffin pan. I went with the mini and they were so cute!

8. Grease and flour the muffin tin and place the dough circles into the wells.

9. While the crusts are baking, make the filling by melting the butter over medium heat.

10. When the butter is completely melted, add the sugars and stir until dissolved.

11. Add the apples, vanilla, and bourbon and stir until combined. Allow to simmer over medium heat for 7-8 minutes until the alcohol is cooked off.

12. After the crusts have baked and the filling is done, scoop the filling into each crust, filling up to the top edge of the crust.

13. Sprinkle ground cinnamon over each tart.

14. Bake at 400 degrees for about 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.

The secret to a flaky crust is cold butter in the dough

Surprise! We have two recipes for Forgiveness and Stuff because it’s Christmas, and I’m about halfway through season one! If you haven’t read my first blog post for Forgiveness and Stuff where I made the famous Santa Burger from Luke’s, be sure to read it first. The Santa Burger is the more iconic Gilmore dish, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make the apple tarts, so I decided to just make both. I mean, if this dessert is enough to make Lorelai brace a dinner party at her grandparents, then they must be incredible. I decided to make these a little more festive by adding bourbon to the apple filling. And what’s not to say Emily Gilmore wouldn’t serve boozy apple tarts at her Christmas party?

I used a 2017 New Year's Eve Champagne flute as my cookie cutter to make these mini tarts

So I definitely had a baking blunder when I made these. It was definitely big enough that could have caused a fire in my apartment (which I had been worried about when I made my banana bread with bananas foster and why I didn’t want to flambé the sauce). Luckily, I caught the blunder before it became catastrophic! I hadn’t realized that one of my potholders had stuck to the muffin tray after I had baked the crust. When I put the tray back in the oven with the apple filling ready to go, the potholder was clinging for dear life to the muffin tray. I noticed an odd smell coming from the oven and quite a bit of smoke coming out of the steam vent. I turned on the oven light and there was the potholder chilling on the bottom rack. I’m so glad it hadn’t fallen onto the heating element because I think that would have definitely caused a Christmas disaster. What baking blunders have you made?

In my last post, I talked about Luke’s love language being acts of service, but I still need to discuss Lorelai’s gift for him. At the very end of the episode, she gifts him a new baseball cap to wear. Fans of the show know that Luke wears this hat in just about every episode until that one fight. I know that Luke is a creature of habit, but Lorelai is really daft for not realizing Luke’s feelings for her by wearing that hat all the damn time, which, I get, is supposed to be the point...but still!

The secret to this amazing filling? A splash of bourbon!

Something we also didn’t discuss was Emily uninviting Lorelai from the Christmas party over the fight they had in the previous episode. What are everyone's thoughts on this? Personally, I think it was an overly dramatic move on Emily’s part. Usually, it’s Lorelai who overreacts in terms of her fights with Emily, but I think Emily is in the wrong in this episode. Christmas used to be one of the only times Lorelai visited her parents before they made the arrangement for Friday night dinners. And while Christmas can be a difficult time for families, it seems like Emily would still insist her own dinner comes to the party. Especially when she made Lorelai still attend when she had the measles as a child.

In my last post, I shared some of the Christmas traditions I have with my sister. Since posting, we drove around to look at Christmas lights while eating Chinese food. We stumbled across one of those houses that syncs up dancing lights to music and purchases a radio station for the performance. We remembered finding one of those houses a couple years ago (although, at the time, we thought it was last year because that’s how time has been passing this year). Turns out, it was actually the same house! So now, we have a light show to visit every year on our Chinese food drive around. It definitely seems like a Christmas tradition Lorelai and Rory would have. Last night, I shared my Gilmore Girl Christmas tree on my Instagram, I've been loving all the suggestions for ornaments to add for next year!

I love using this mini muffin tray, it makes everything so cute!

I want to give a quick update on my posting schedule. When I decided to launch Eating Gilmore, my goal was to reach Forgiveness and Stuff by Christmas, and I mostly cooked when I had time with my job. But now, I want to get on a more regular posting schedule. I’m going to try to post every Wednesday and Saturday, but that will all depend on my work schedule. For anyone who is watching the series along with my blog, you can now schedule your episode viewings starting on December 30! Merry Christmas!

Happy Cooking!

What songs are you going to write about these apple tarts?

If you missed what else I made for this episode, catch up here!