Sunday's recipe: Red love apple rose tartelettes

These beauties just might be the prettiest dessert I've ever baked. It was the first time I bought red love apples and I was utterly amazed by the color of this variety. I came across the recipe on a German blog and translated everything, which you'll find below. Here's what you need to get started:

Ingredients (for 12 tartelettes made in a muffin tin)

For the dough
250 g flour
75 g sugar
1 organic lemon
125 g cold butter
1 egg

For the apple roses:
6 red apples
500 ml of apple juice
250 g sugar

For the filling:
75 g sugar
1 egg
2 egg yolks
1/2 organic lemon
125 g mascarpone
2 large apples
2 tbsp cornstarch

How to:
For the dough, mix the flour, sugar and the zest of a lemon in a bowl. Add the ice cold butter in cubes, working it in with your fingertips into the flour mixture so it looks crumbly. Whisk the egg and gradually add it to the other ingredients using a had mixer. Keep stirring until the ingredients form a dough. Rolled intoa ball, wrap the dough in plastic wrap and let it rest for at least 30 minutes in the fridge. Meanwhile you can prepapre the apples.

Now we begin the process of making these beautiful roses.
Wash the apples, cut them in half, remove the core and cut out with a knife the stem and the stalk. Next, cut the apple halves into thin slices. Each apple half should leave you with approx. 12 slices. When you put the slices immediately in a bowl of lemon water they don't turn brown .

In a saucepan, bring the apple juice to a boil with the sugar.
Take the apple slices out of the lemon water and let them simmer in the boiling apple juice in small batches, each time only a few minutes until the apple skins become softened and are easier to bend, but not too soft so they do fall apart. When they are just right, drain the slices and let them cool completely.

If you're through with the last batch of slices. continue to let the apple juice mixture simmer until it's reduced to about 1/4 of the original liquid amount. Then set aside and let cool. Arrange the apple slices in an overlapping design on parchement paper starting from the left to right. You should have 12 rows (for 12 roses) each with approx, 10-12 slices. If you're unsure on how they should look like, head over to this German blog with lose of pictures where I also found this recipe.

Now for the filling, mix all the ingredients, paying attention not to stir the mascarpone too long (otherwise you'll have clotted cream), Grate the apples, squeeze their liquid out and mix them into the mascarpone mixture. Stir in the cornstarch in heaped tablespoons.

As you have now prepared everything, you can assemble the tartelettes:
Grease a muffin baking tin and line it with parchment paper either completely or just a strip all around the edges so you can remove/lift the tartelettes easier when they are done. Roll the dough out about 3 mm thick under a piece of plastic wrap, cut circles using for instance a cup or another round object and line the muffin tin. With a fork prick the bottom of the tartlets a few times. Next, fill each with a generous spoonful of the filling.

To make the rose buds, you have to roll each row of apple slices, starting left, while holding well and carefully keep rolling until you reach the end and it looks like a rose. Place each rose into a tartelette, the filling allows you to place with its shape a little bit.

Bake the tartelettes in a preheated oven at 200 ° C top/bottom heat for about 24 minutes. Depending on your oven, you might need to turn the muffin tin at half of the baking time to ensure even baking results. When they are done, remove them from the muffin tin and let them cool.

Remember the apple juice syrup you set aside previously? You can brush your roses with it so they're nice and shiny. Now give yourself a pat on the back, you made it! Aren't they beautiful?