Christoph and Steffi's Food and Travel & Christoph and Steffi's Food and Travel EN DE
A pineapple tarte tatin flipped onto a plate, golden caramelized rings arranged in a circle
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Dessert French European Vegetarian Nut-free

Quick Pineapple Tarte Tatin

The store-cupboard tatin, built on tinned pineapple rings, which are already peeled, cored and cut and come packed in juice that reduces into the caramel. Draining them properly and drying them on paper is the only real work, and it is the difference between a dark rum caramel and a pale watery syrup that never thickens.

Prep8 min
Cook27 min
Rest10 min
Oven200°C
Servings6
Cook mode

Christoph's store-cupboard tatin using tinned pineapple rings and the melted butter and brown sugar shortcut.

Ingredients

Written for a 25 cm pan

Units
Temperature
Servings
6

Pan caramel

  • 60 g unsalted butter
  • 90 g dark brown sugar
  • 20 ml dark rum (optional)
  • 1 g fine salt

Pineapple and pastry

  • 800 g tinned pineapple rings in juice, two 400 g tins, drained thoroughly and patted dry
  • 320 g all-butter puff pastry, one ready-rolled sheet, kept cold

Dietary labels are a guide, not a guarantee. If you have an allergy, read the ingredients yourself.

Method

  1. Heat the oven to 200°C.
  2. Drain and dry the pineapple properly. Tip the rings into a sieve and leave them 5 minutes, then lay them out on kitchen paper and press another sheet on top. Wet rings are the only way this recipe fails, and they will not caramelise until every drop has boiled off.
  3. Melt the butter and brown sugar in a 25 cm ovenproof skillet over medium heat, swirling for about 2 minutes until smooth and bubbling. Add the rum, let it bubble 30 seconds, stir in the salt and take the pan off the heat.
  4. Arrange the rings in a single layer, one in the centre and the rest around it, overlapping slightly at the edges where the circle does not quite fit. Fill the ring holes with any broken pieces so there are no gaps of bare caramel.
  5. Cover with the pastry, trimmed to a circle 2 cm wider than the pan, pricked all over, tucked down inside the pan wall.
  6. Bake 25 to 27 minutes, until the pastry is deep golden and the caramel at the edge has darkened and thickened.
  7. Rest 10 minutes and flip onto a rimmed plate. The rings should come out dark gold with the holes filled with caramel.

Notes

  • Rings in juice, not in syrup. Syrup-packed pineapple is already sweet enough to make the finished tatin cloying, and its sugar burns before the pastry is done. If syrup is all you can get, cut the brown sugar to 60 g.
  • Keep the drained juice. Boiled down hard in a small pan to a few spoonfuls, it makes a sharp glaze to brush over the flipped tatin, and it is the closest this gets to tasting of fresh fruit.
  • Fresh pineapple is better and slower. If you want to use it, the book’s careful version is pineapple tarte tatin, which cooks the fruit down first to drive off water. This one exists for the evening when the tin is what you have.
  • Good cold the next day, unusually for a tatin. The dense fruit does not weep the way stone fruit and banana do.

Good with

From Christoph Mayer

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