Tarte tatin and chocolate bites

I decided that my flan ring hasn't seen nearly enough use since I got it. So what better thing to bake than an apple tart? This recipe is heavily based on the Tarte Tatin in Leith's Cookery Bible (which is excellent and highly recommended).

Tarte Tatin
Ingredients
For the pastry

• 230g Plain flour
• 130g Butter
• 75g Caster sugar
• Very cold water

For the topping

• 55g Butter
• 70g Dark soft brown sugar
• 750g Apples (I used Braeburn apples)
• Splash of lemon juice

Method

1. Sift the flour into a bowl and rub the butter in until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs.
2. Mix in the caster sugar.
3. Add just enough water to bind into a dough and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
4. In the mean time, make the topping. In a frying pan, melt the butter, add the sugar and remove from the heat.
5. Core the apples and slice into thick wedges.
6. Lay the apple slices over the butter/sugar mixture in the frying pan and heat over a moderate heat for ~20 minutes until the apples start to caramelise.
7. Roll out the dough to a thickness of 5-10mm and line a flan ring.
8. Pour out the apple mixture into the flan case including the remaining butter/sugar mixture.
9. Bake at 190C/Gas Mark 5 for 25-30 minutes.

The apples in the pan (start of step 6). As you can see, there was too much apple to make a single layer.The flan case ready for the gooey apple mixture (end of step 7).Ready for the oven (end of step 8)! I thought it looked so good, I wanted to eat it right there and then...
...but it's even better straight from the oven.

I had a bit of dough leftover that I didn't really know what to do with, so I thought I'd experiment. I just rolled it out and wrapped a few chocolate squares in it and stuck it in the oven below the tart to see what would happen.

Chocolate Bites
Ingredients

• Leftover pastry from tarte tatin
• Dark chocolate squares

Method

1. Roll out pastry and wrap chocolate squares individually.
2. Bake on shelf below tarte tatin.

Here are the uncooked chocolate bites. Not looking particularly promising at this stage.But they look rather a lot better coming out of the oven.And even better than that... break one open and here's what you get!