Worlds collide

At a lot of the training classes and district meetings that I go to, not everyone knows one another, so we go around and introduce ourselves.  Name, branch, how long with the company, that sort of thing.  And to make it slightly more interesting, sometimes we'll add "and tell something about yourself that no one else here knows."  It's fun to hear what people come up with.  For me, I've mentioned things like:  I played the flute for 10 years, including chamber music in college.  I've visited 36 states, and lived in 8 of them.  My husband and I have been married for almost 8 years, but have known each other for 22 years. Recently, I told them that I write a baking blog.  And I have one ready for next time--I'm part of a fantasy hockey league.

I played fantasy hockey once before, but it was a number of years ago.  I came to be a hockey fan because Jamie (my husband) has been a diehard fan practically forever.  At first, I didn't really know what the heck was going on as I watched games on TV with him.  Eventually it started to make sense.  Then I got really into it.  Then I had kids. =)  So for the past few years, I've been lucky to watch two or three games a season outside the playoffs.  This year, though, I have incentive to pay more attention.  A few days ago, Laurie (our fearless leader of TWD and FFwD) tweeted that she needed one more person for her fantasy hockey league.  I responded, saying that I might be interested.  She assured me that the league was for fun (not super serious), so I figured, why not?  We had our draft yesterday; now we wait for another week or so for the season to officially start.  Laurie commented during the draft that it was a bit weird to have her baking and hockey worlds overlapping.  I can understand that.  For a lot of us, we're different people in different situations, like at home versus at work or at school.  It's a bit weird when people from one world suddenly show up in another, and see a different side of us, and sometimes learn stuff that they didn't know about us.

So aside from Laurie, what does fantasy hockey have to do with this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe?  Well, one of my good blogging friends, Leslie of Lethally Delicious, picked Tarte Fine for us to make this week.  This fairly simple recipe consists of a rolled out sheet of puff pastry layered with thinly sliced apples and topped with sugar (with a bit of egg wash to help it stick).  I think I had this recipe on the brain when I first logged in to set up my FHL team, because when it asked me to pick a name for my team the first thing that popped into my head was Puck Pastry.  I tried to think of something else, since it seemed a bit too silly, but it stuck.  So Puck Pastry it is.  Wish me luck! =)

A few more notes on the tarte... I have a hard time finding all-butter puff pastry dough around here that isn't outrageously expensive, so I made my own. I used the recipe for Quick Puff Pastry from The Art and Soul of Baking. It makes about 2 pounds of dough and I only needed about 8 ounces for this recipe, so the rest is waiting in my freezer. For the apples, I used one of my favorites, macintosh. We're just starting to get New York apples down here, but the new crop of macs showed up in time for this and some of the other apple recipes coming up in the next few weeks. Tart apples are my favorites--macintosh, macoun, jonathan, jonamac, gravenstein. We'll see how many I can get my hands on this year. I baked the tart until the edges were getting nicely browned, about 30 minutes, I think. And I didn't have anything to use for glaze, so I skipped it.

The verdict?  This tart was delicious. I just wish there was more of it. =)  I cut the large rectangle into 6 pieces, as Dorie suggests in the recipe.  But each is so thin, it's gone before you know it, and you're left wanting more.  I could eat buttery, flaky pastry all day long, given the opportunity.  But I was good--I ate one piece after taking the pictures, and had a second for breakfast the next morning.  Brianna and Gillian joined me for breakfast, and really seemed to enjoy the tart as well.  (Jamie got some, too, the night I made it.)  I definitely think I'll be making this one again.  I'd like to try the butter & sugar variation given with the recipe, or at least have something to use for glaze next time.

If you'd like to try this one for yourself, head over to Leslie's blog for the recipe.  And you can find out how the other TWD bakers fared this week over on the Links page.