My First Review! Recipe: Apple Charlottes

For the past 5 years, I have been using the website www.food.com to find and post recipes.  It's a great site for a picky eater, with a recipe sifter option that allows you to find things like "coleslaw without mayo" and "Club Sandwhich without bacon."  While I am guilty of finding a recipe and then changing everything about it but cook time and temp, I've found many on this site that I haven't changed a thing.

Unfortunately, I have been a little lax about posting my own recipes. At this time, I've only posted 4.  Recently, food.com hosted an Adopt a Chef event, where chefs with multiple recipes select a chef with few recipes and cook one of their recipes for a review.  I was selected as one of the new chefs and had my grandma's recipe for Apple Charlottes reviewed this week.  This is what the other chef had to say:

Yum, these tarts were delicious kmact. We enjoyed these little gems so much. They were awesome, beautiful cookie crust, crisp and tender all at the same time, filled with a lovely apple filling. I used homemade spiced applesauce, it worked perfectly in this dish. They were quick and so easy to make. We will be enjoying this treat often. Thanks so much for sharing.

 I got this review on a day where work was less than enjoyable and I returned home to find that I had given DH the wrong instructions for preparing a frozen dinner I had made.  I was feeling pretty low when I read this.  It's incredible how some random stranger's opinion about something I didn't even create improved my day.  It didn't even bother me that her pictures of the ones she made looked soooo much better than my own.

Getting the review on this particular recipe meant a lot.  When I was very young, my Grandma Mac would make these for special events.  Such special events that birthdays and holidays did not qualify, despite my continued requests.  When I finally convinced her to give me the recipe, I understood why.  Lots of swearing and lots of flour EVERYWHERE resulted in a dozen of these fantastic little tarts and a bit of a headache.  Practice makes perfect, so I hope after many years of graduations, moon walks and nobel prize wins, my tarts will look as good as the ones the kind reviewer made.
Try the recipe yourself and let me know what you think! 

 

 

• 1/2 cup Crisco shortening
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoons milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups flour
• 1 cup applesauce
• icing sugar

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400F.
2. Separately, cream crisco and sugar; sift together dry ingredients; beat egg, milk and vanilla.
3. Mix all 3 parts together well.
4. Flour cutting board and roll dough out thinly.
5. Cut out small circles for the tops and large circles for the base.
6. Place large circles in muffin tins.
7. Add 1 tbs of apple sauce to each tin.
8. Add tops, seal with fingers or fork.
9. Score the tops with knife or fork.
10. Bake for 12 minutes.
11. While cooling, sprinkle with icing sugar.