Apple Cream Cheese Caramel Tart-Pantry Dessert
Ever wonder what to do with some of your fall pantry items, especially apples? I was mulling that same idea when a friend brought me some beautiful Granny Smith Apples. My focus took me to wanting to try something different this season with things I already had on hand in the pantry. The Apple Cream Cheese Tart was born.
Pantry Items
This is 100% made with pantry items on hand, which is nice not having to run out to the store to get items I might need. What’s also great is, just one component of this dessert is baked (the tart dough), the rest is no bake! This makes for an easy dessert to put together.
Tart Dough
Flour, powdered sugar, salt, butter, egg, cream, and vanilla
Cream Cheese Filling
Cream cheese, sour cream, powdered sugar, lemon juice, and cream
Apples
Beautiful Granny Smith apples from the orchard
Caramel
Leftover caramel sauce
Crumb Topping
Flour, sugar, butter
Inspiration
My inspiration came from a beautiful crisp fall Sunday and these beautiful apples. It was Sunday dinner and I wanted a delicious dessert to celebrate the season. Not to mention, it was a great dessert to follow pork tenderloin.
Assembling the Apple Cream Cheese Tart
Let me show you the steps to make this yummy dessert. It takes a little time but worth each step.
Tart Dough
First, I make my tart dough and pop it in the fridge to chill a bit. Then roll it out into a rectangular tart pan. I’ve had this pan for many years and decided this would be the perfect pan to make its debut in.
The dough gets blind baked by placing pie weights onto parchment paper on top of the dough and baked till lightly golden brown. This is the only thing that gets baked. The crust is cooled completely before its filled.
Apple Cream Cheese Filling
Next, the cream cheese no-bake filling is made. This is such a super easy recipe and taste so delicious. No one will ever know its not baked! There is something about apples and cream cheese and this is the perfect accompaniment with the apples.
Click here for the recipe (use half of this recipe for this tart).
The filling gets added into the crust and then refrigerated a few hours till firm.
Apples
For the star of the show, crisp Granny Smith Apples. These are sliced thinly and sautéed with butter and brown sugar till soft. I even added a bit of peach butter I picked up from a country store in Dahlonega, GA. I like to use my apple slicer/corer tool to cut and slice the apples, it works perfect here.
Once they are cooked and cooled, they are placed on top of the cream cheese layer.
Caramel
Leftover caramel sauce is perfect to add for additional flavor and color. Apples and caramel are a great marriage for the fall aren’t they? Just a light drizzle to coat the apples seems right to raise this Apple Cream Cheese Tart to maximum potential.
Crumble Topping
Last, but not least is a crumble that finishes the tart off by giving it a little crunch for texture. I love saving extra crumbles in the freezer because they seem to always find their way into something new, like this Apple Cream Cheese Tart! Perfect finisher!
Leftover from a pie I had made, I take leftover crumble and place in a freezer bag and keep in the freezer when ideas pop up! These are great sprinkled on top of muffins too!
The best part was getting to slice into this yummy tart. All though dinner I couldn’t stop thinking of dessert and getting to taste this pantry creation. Of course, this is perfect with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top, and it definitely was!
Love Apples? Check out some of my other apple favorites:
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