Hello everybody! Given my three-month hiatus from blogging, it seems as if I dropped off from the face of the Earth. But I’m alive! I’m juggling between the stresses of high school and extracurricular activities and playing the endless game of homework catch-up, but I am still alive.

I admit that I should be more consistent with maintaining my blog. To be honest, I’m really working on my time-management skills. Even though sophomore year is still not the “climax” of high school,  it has still been quite a rough transition from freshman year. In retrospect, freshman year was largely smooth sailing. Perhaps in junior year I’ll think sophomore year was smooth sailing and freshman year was even smoother. Oh well. Everything is always put into perspective.

Anyway, a whole bunch has happened between now and since I last made an appearance on the Interwebs. College application season is in full swing, and my stressified senior friends’ anxieties are rubbing off on me big-time. I lost my sanity, found it, only to lose it again. I found out I need knee surgery (lots more on that later-I promise).

I think a nice way to segway into this well-deserved winter vacation is to share my experiment with making apple-rose tarts. I remember seeing this recipe on Tastemade’s Snapchat channel and thinking, “Wow, these look so professional, but so easy to make!”

For an inexperienced baker like me, these apple rose tarts were NOT easy to make.

One of the first steps to the recipe is to cut the apple into thin slices. I don’t have a mandolin nor fine knife skills, so the apple slices turned out quite fat an uneven, as you can imagine. My parents don’t believe in microwaves and have this superstition that they’ll somehow give you cancer, so we softened the apples in a pot over low heat. I may have overcooked them a little bit.

Also, I  overlooked the “add sugar” step; I didn’t add any sweetener besides the decorative castor sugar. Either way, the tarts were still mildly sweet from the apples themselves. I used honey crisp apples; they’re naturally crunchy and extremely sweet, so they’re the best apples to bake with!

As you can see with my forgetfulness to add sugar, I must have also completely skipped over the step to fold the tarts in half, because the first time around they looked like the Moais from Easter Island.

It was only after the tarts were in the oven for five minutes before my mom asked, “Katie, why are the tarts so tall?” that I realized I forgot to fold them! It was such a hassle to unroll them, fold them in half, and roll them again. Oh well. Like I said, these tarts were purely experimental.

After 40 very long minutes the tarts were finally done! Experimental or not, they were still crispy and sweet and so good! The cream cheese gave a nice gooey texture in contrast to the crispy puff pastry. And the cinnamon took the flavor to a whole new level. The tarts even looked professionally made.

MY TAKEAWAYS ARE:

• DON’T EXPECT THE FIRST TIME AROUND TO BE EASY. Tastemade’s video made the recipe look SO much easier than it actually was. Well, it is their job to make recipes look as straightforward as possible so people like me will try them out. But seriously, when the guy in the video was spreading the cream cheese it spread so evenly! When I tried to do that, the cream cheese looked like a pile of turds were strewn across the puff pastry.
• SET REASONABLE EXPECTATIONS. The first time you try a new recipe is always the most disastrous. In particular, this recipe took me two hours total (prep and baking) and yielded only four pastries. Four!!! In two whole hours!!!
• READ THE DIRECTIONS CAREFULLY. Directions are important. They tell you important things!

Here is the culmination of my two fretful but fulfilling hours in the kitchen:

I included a hyperlink to Tastemade’s video and recipe earlier in this post, but if you guys did not see before, here it is again. I hope you guys try the recipe!

See you soon,

Katie