Heart Apple Tart Recipe

We were inspired by a recent post from Oncewed and Elizabeth Colling to make a sweet apple tart in honor of Valentine's day. We have always had a love for pies and thought this one seemed like the perfect one to try out. The original photography by Elizabeth Messina was enough to make us feel like we were in the kitchen and ready to eat. So we tried out our own version and tweaked a few things in the recipe. Here is our version. Let us know what you think!

First you will have to make the crust. The original recipe calls for a Pate Brissee which is the French version of a traditional pie crust. So that's what we did. You can find Martha Stewart's original recipe here. We took her recipe and modified it to make our own.

Here's What You'll Need:

2 1/2 C. Flour

1 t. Salt

1 C. Unsalted Butter (or 2 sticks)

1/4 C. Ice Water

2 Pieces of Saran Wrap (about 12"x12" each)

Mix the flour and salt together in a medium sized bowl. Then cut the butter into pieces and mix with the dry ingredients until the mixture is clumpy. Next mix in the water until smooth and divide dough in half. Place each half of dough into its own piece of saran wrap and condense each together on its own until they become dough balls. Put the balls in fridge for 30 mins to 1 hour. Once this time has passed, remove one dough ball from the fridge and roll out from all directions. Fit it inside pan and trim outer edge so it's clean. Leave other part in fridge while making fruit filling.

Go ahead and preheat the oven to 425 degrees. And then peel, core, and cute the apples into square chunks. We went with a bag of Gala Apples. We have this great apple core peeler that Kaleb's mother gave us that would work really well for this recipe.

What You'll Need for the Filling:

8-10 Apples

1 c. Blackberries

1/2 c. Sugar

2 T. Lemon Juice

1/4 c. All Purpose Flour

1/2 t. Salt

1 T. Butter (Cut into small Chunks)

3 Egg yolk

2 T. Heavy Cream

2 T. Sugar (use sanding sugar for a prettier pie in the end)

In a large bowl mix apple chunks, blackberries, sugar, lemon juice, flour, and salt. Mix with spatula til everything is sticking together. 

Put all ingredients into pie pan on top of the cut dough. Cut chunks of butter and place on top of fruit mixture. 

Now pull out the second half of dough from the fridge and roll out until a quarter inch thick. Cut heart shapes out of dough. Begin placing heart shapes on top of fruit filling starting with the outer edge and work your way in with a circle pattern. Once complete, whisk together egg yolks with heavy cream. Brush this mixture over entire top of pie and sprinkle with sugar.

Photos by Kaleb Nimz

Bake for 15 minutes at 425 degrees and then turn oven down to 350 degrees for 30 mins or until hearts are golden brown.