Summer is admittedly not my favorite season. I know legions disagree with me on this, and that’s okay. Individual Peach Tarte Tatins, warm with vanilla ice cream, make the long, hot summers totally worth it.

See, the thing is, I have curly hair. Like seriously curly, big, unruly, frizzy-if-you-breathe-on-it kind of hair. I know tons of people wait all year for the warm, fun in the sun weather. I just don’t have the hair for July. Or August. Just the sound of the word August makes me shudder and reach for a bottle of leave-in conditioner and a hair tie. It isn’t pretty.

The one thing summer does have going for it is produce. To be specific, sweet corn and peaches. Oh, the peaches. I wait all year for fresh local peaches. I should have thought of this before I moved to the top of a mountain in the Poconos, but alas, I did not. Peach season in Northeast Pennsylvania is late, and it’s short. Because of that, it’s all the more precious when it arrives. I love to cook and bake with those gorgeous, sweet, golden fruits when they hit the farmer’s market, and one of my must-bakes are these individual peach Tarte Tatins.

What is a Tarte Tatin?

Tarte Tatin is a French dessert, and it’s really just an upside down pie. They are traditionally made with apples, and are fabulous. Typical tarte tatins are large enough to feed 8-10 people, and made in a pan similar in size to a big cast iron skillet. They start with making a caramel from butter and sugar, cooking the halved fruit in the caramel sauce, and then covering it with a round of pastry and baking. After it’s cooked, the pan gets inverted onto a platter, and you have flaky pastry topped with soft, sweet baked fruit in a caramel sauce. It’s phenomenal, and all the better when accompanied by a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

But, there’s just something about peaches that make these so special. I love peaches and caramel together. They’re a perfect pairing. The individual size of these desserts is great, everyone gets their own little tarte and they look beautiful on the plate. They are also deceptively easy to make. We’re going to use store-bought puff pastry for the tartes. You can make puff pastry at home. It’s not easy. It’s laborious and time-consuming because it is a laminated dough that requires a lot of turning and rolling and resting. There’s also a butter block involved, so unless you have superior central air in your home, it’s not a summer project!

The peaches are also very easy to prepare, nothing more than peel, pit, and slice in half. That’s all. No slicing, dicing, pre-cooking shenanigans.

“But what about the caramel?” you ask? “Caramel can burn!” you cry? “Caramel seizes if you look at it wrong!” you wail? Nah. No big deal. One secret ingredient stops the seizing nonsense, and you’re not going to take a nap while you cook it. You’ve totally got this.

Ingredient Notes

Peaches – Pick the best in-season peaches you can find. Some things are glorious for their short window of opportunity, and peach season is just one of those things. Locally grown peaches are going to taste best, and be easiest to peel, because they can be left to ripen on the tree longer than peaches that need to be shipped across the country, or the hemisphere.
Puff Pastry – Buy it. Just buy the stuff. Don’t make life harder than it has to be! It’s readily available in the frozen section of your supermarket. Sure, you could make it, but it’s a serious project, and the likelihood of noticing a real difference in the finished dish is very small. If you really want to give it a shot, The Kitchn has a great recipe for doing so, here. The recipe is very detailed; there are, no kidding, 17 steps and 40 pictures for how to do it.
Corn Syrup – Corn Syrup is the secret ingredient in your caramel sauce that will stop it from seizing up. When you heat sugar, it goes from a crystal structure to a liquid. That’s what you want. Caramel seizes when sugar that is still in crystal form finds its way into the liquid sugar, and the liquid begins to reform around that crystal back to its original form. It’s very easy for this to happen, all you need to do is stir the caramel with a spoon that has a grain or two of sugar on it. Then it’s hard, lumpy, and a giant mess that means you have to start over again. A tablespoon or so of corn syrup prevents that from happening. Corn syrup is already a liquid form of sugar, and its molecules get in the way when sugar tries to reform into crystals. And no, this isn’t the same stuff you hear people complaining about all the time. That’s high-fructose corn syrup. Not the same thing. The corn syrup you can buy in the baking aisle is not high-fructose. Food and Wine has a very good article that explains the difference, and you can check it out here.

How to Make Peach Tarte Tatins

Peel the peaches. Peaches are a bit more challenging to peel than apples or pears. The secret is to drop them in boiling water for about 30 seconds, and then put them in a bowl of ice water. After a minute in the ice water, you can peel the skins off with your fingers. This works best with fruit that is nice and ripe. Underripe peaches don’t like to peel. If you have a stubborn spot, use the tip of a paring knife to pick up a corner of the skin and then peel away from there. Once you have the skin off, cut around the peach from top to bottom and separate the halves. The pit will be right there for you to take out.
Making caramel – This just isn’t as scary as you might be thinking. Melt the butter in a skillet large enough to fit your peach halves. Add the white sugar and corn syrup to the melted butter, and swirl the pan over low to medium heat. Once the sugar melts completely, keep an eye on the pan, swirling it around occasionally, until the caramel is a nice, rich brown. This is the part where you don’t take a nap! Caramel can burn quickly, so keep that flame fairly low and keep watching. I always try to use a pan that is light in color so that I can see the color of the caramel. A black nonstick or cast iron pan will make it difficult to judge your caramel’s progress.

Cooking the peaches – Once your caramel is where you want it, place the peach halves in the pan, cut side down. Cook for 4-5 minutes, and then flip each peach over, and cook again for 4-5 more minutes. Then we’re going to get them into the muffin pan, cut side up. This dessert is going to get flipped before serving, so we want the pretty side on the bottom of the muffin pan while they bake. Spoon the sauce evenly onto each peach half.

Baking – Cut out rounds of your puff pastry, thawed of course, that are the right size to just fit inside the muffin tin compartments. Lay those circles on top of the peach halves. Bake at 375 for 18-20 minutes, until the puff pastry is golden brown. Remove from the oven, let cool no more than 5 minutes, and then flip onto a rimmed baking sheet. Rimmed is important, you don’t want hot caramel running off of the baking sheet onto your fingers.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.