Individual Apple Rose Frangipane Tarts Recipe

You may have seen that I've made these individual apple rose frangipane tarts before a few years ago. Just like with my Icelandic rye bread ice cream recipe, I felt like they deserved their own blog post – especially as I wanted to make a video recipe for them too.

Apple rose puff pastry tarts were all the rage around 2011–2015, and I wanted to add my own twist to them. Instead of wrapping apple slices around in a spiral of puff pastry, I made pastry cases with the puff pastry, filled them with frangipane and then carefully shaped roses out of the slices of apple themselves before popping them into each filled pastry case.

And although I've seen a few similar recipes pop up since then – some replacing my almond frangipane with another nut frangipane, some making the pastry from scratch but following all the other steps, some just reproducing my recipe step by step but replacing rose jam with rose water etc. I'm calling it: I'm pretty sure I was the first to make individual frangipane apple rose tarts. Or at least to publish a recipe on the internet. Putting apple slices in a pastry case full of frangipane isn't exactly rocket science, and there's no such thing as an original idea, so I'm sure someone else must have thought of it before me somewhere even if they never published it. In any case, find me an earlier one and I'll humbly stand corrected.

Saltiness at lack of credit aside, I'm super proud of these tarts. They're crisp and buttery on the outside, super rich in the centre from the creamy almond frangipane filling, and tangy and fruity (of course) from the strawberry and rose jam-brushed apples baked inside.

In my previous recipe I used rose jam – but as I had some rose syrup lying around this time, that's what I've used here. Both work equally well for these apple rose frangipane tarts.

Also, I don't have a microwave any more, so in this recipe I'll give you an alternative to softening your apple slices.

You can also watch me make this recipe on YouTube:

Ready? Let's go.

Ingredients for Tarts:

1 block of ready-made, ready-rolled puff pastry (preferably all-butter)
3 large red or pink-skinned, crisp apples (not Red Delicious)
1 tbsp lemon juice + water for soaking the apple slices
1 egg
45g butter, melted
45g caster sugar
70g ground almonds
1/2 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp vanilla

To Glaze:

1 tbsp strawberry jam
2 tsp rose jam or 1 tsp rose syrup
A little boiling water

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C, slice the apples in quarters and remove the core.

2. Slice each apple half into thin, even slices and add to a pan of water and lemon juice.

3. Simmer for about five minutes or until the slices are soft and bendy, drain and cool.

4. Grease a 12-hole muffin pan and line with strips of baking paper to make the tarts easier to lift out later.

5. Roll out (or unroll, if it's pre-rolled) the puff pastry dough, cut out circles a tiny bit bigger than the pan's holes and arrange them in the muffin pan to create little tart shells.

6. Make the frangipane by mixing the ground almonds, melted butter, sugar, egg, almond extract and vanilla extract together.

7. Evenly divide the frangipane between the pastry cases.

8. Take 7–10 slices of apple, arrange them in a row so they're overlapping starting from left to right, and roll up from left to right. You'll need to use all your fingers and hands to keep the 'petals' together.

9. Pop the apple rose into a filled pastry case, pushing down lightly and rearranging the petals as needed. Repeat until you've filled all the cases. You'll probably have some leftover apple slices.

10. Bake for about 25 minutes, or until the pastry is golden and cooked through.

11. While the tarts are baking, make the glaze by stirring the jam, syrup and a little boiling water together in a small bowl.

12. When they come out of the oven, brush the still-hot tarts with a little of your glaze.

13. Leave to cool before popping out of the tin and enjoying.

Enjoy, and have fun.