Bake A Dazzling Apple Tart In No Time With 2 Store-Bought Shortcuts

While baking can be time-consuming, it doesn't need to be to in order to achieve tasty results. Even relatively complicated pastries can be made easier by taking a few shortcuts when doing prep work. Often, the convenient options won't require you to compromise on flavor, either.

Take, for instance, an apple tart. Whether you're angling to bake the luxuriously flaky tarte tatin, a French cake first made in the 1880s, or a simpler version of the sweet treat that's easier to assemble, the delicious dessert is the perfect way to indulge in crisp apples and classic fall flavors, no matter the season or occasion. And even though at its core, an apple tart usually features only a few essential components — apple slices, pastry dough, and a caramelized sugar coating — each of these aspects can take a while to whip up from scratch. In particular, the process of preparing the buttery pastry and caramelizing the apples can take hours of labor and attention, from kneading and chilling the dough to simmering the fruit on the stovetop.

Fortunately, it's possible to streamline the bake overall by buying ready-made ingredients from the grocery store to create each part of the tart. Instead of preparing pastry from scratch, purchase frozen sheets of pre-made puff pastry. As an alternative to slowly caramelizing apples in sugar and butter, save time with canned caramel or dulce de leche. The resulting apple tart will be much simpler to make, but just as sweet.

While scratch-made pastry dough is the status quo for tarte tatin and similar fruit tarts (notably different from cakelike tortes), store-bought puff pastry is a busy baker's best friend. Instead of fussing with mixing, pressing, and chilling dough into a pastry base or opting for a plain ol' frozen pie crust, frozen puff pastry only requires rolling and cutting to shape for an irresistibly crispy, flaky apple tart. The store-bought stuff can be found in most supermarket freezer sections next to the frozen pie crusts and other pre-made doughs.

For the other main component of an apple tart, there's another ready-to-use ingredient that lets you skip the step of caramelizing the fruit yourself. Either canned or jarred caramel or dulce de leche could be your saving grace. Despite the fact that both sweet, sticky substances look so similar, caramel and dulce de leche are different. Sometimes featuring a bitter taste, caramel is made by melting butter and sugar over heat. However, dulce de leche (Spanish for "candy made from milk") uses milk and sugar instead for a creamier, toffee-like taste.

Ultimately, either option tastes great when tossed with apple slices and baked into a dessert, although you could decide between the two sauces based on the flavor of fruit you're using. For an extra sweet touch, drizzle caramel or dulce de leche over the tart after baking. With these store-bought shortcuts, you can bake an excellent apple tart in no time.