Halloween: The Holiday I Hate

As a parent, Halloween can be a nightmare. It's a holiday that brings out the worst in people, with kids begging for candy and parents struggling to keep up with the chaos. But what really gets under my skin is the way Halloween seems to suck all the joy out of everything else. Everywhere you look, there are spiders, skeletons, and witches - it's like the whole world has turned into a giant playground for creepy crawlies.

And don't even get me started on the masks. I know some people love them, but to me they're just too scary. The scream mask in particular is one that really gets my blood boiling. There's something about the way it distorts your face and makes you look like a completely different person that just sends shivers down my spine.

As for candy, well... let's just say I'm not exactly thrilled with the amount of sugar that comes with Halloween. It's like the whole holiday is one big excuse to indulge in sugary treats. And don't even get me started on the apples - they're like a never-ending supply of sour, tart goodness that just seems to get more and more abundant every year.

But despite all my misgivings, I do have to admit that Halloween has its charms. There's something about the way the streets come alive with costumes and decorations that's hard to resist. And at the end of the day, it's all about having fun and being silly - which is exactly what Halloween is all about.

As a parent, it's my job to try and make the most of this chaotic holiday. So I've been experimenting with different recipes for tart treats like apple tarts, one of which we'll be making in this article. With its flaky crust, tender apples, and hint of brown butter, this rustic apple tart is sure to become a new favorite.

To start, preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. While that's warming up, let's take a look at the ingredients we'll need for our recipe. We'll be using a mix of Granny Smith and Honeycrisp apples, as well as some sugar, salt, and lemon juice to give it that extra kick. Don't forget the brown butter - that's where all the magic happens.

While the oven is preheating, let's get started on the preparation. Peel, core, and slice up those apples until you have about a quarter of an inch of thin slices. Next, mix together the sugar, salt, and lemon juice in a small bowl until it forms a nice syrup-like consistency. Add in your brown butter and stir until everything is well combined.

Now that our ingredients are ready, let's talk about assembling our tart. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit once again - we want it hot for this tart! Roll out the dough into a circle, big enough to fit all those apples on top. Don't worry too much if it's not perfect - we're going for rustic here.

Next, brush a little bit of brown butter onto the edges of the crust and sprinkle with some sugar. This will give our tart that extra oomph of flavor when it comes out of the oven. Now it's time to add in those apples - arrange them on top of the dough in a pretty pattern, leaving a little room around the edges.

Finally, pop that tart into the oven for about an hour, or until the crust is golden brown and the apples are tender. When it comes out, brush it with just a tiny bit more brown butter to give it that extra sheen. And voila - your very own rustic apple tart is ready to be devoured!

As you take your first bite, notice how flaky the crust is and how the apples come together in perfect harmony. It's a truly magical experience, one that's sure to become a new favorite for years to come. So go ahead, dig in - I promise it won't let you down!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwe can only film from this side because I forgot to put this earring back in this morning cuz I've slept on it and it was okay and just like do this for the rest of the day hey guys it's Kyle I'm here in the BA test kitchen and today I'm going to make my favorite method for making pastry dough which has no special equipment no food processor and doesn't get messed up and then we're gonna take that dough and make a super rustic apple tart where you don't even peel the apples because why why so super simple all-purpose flour a little bit of salt sugar toss toss just use your your use your hands and then with one of these handy-dandy bench scrapers which I'm gonna use throughout the whole dough making process this is four ounces half a cup of unsalted butter so again just using my hands I'm tossing the butter into the flour mixture and I'm doing that just to coat the outside of these cubes they're gonna want to stick anyway but this way it's kind of like a little bit of insulation okay don't need the cutting board again get that out of there and now another part that I really enjoy is just dumping it right onto the work surface normal pastry dough recipes at this point would tell you to either smash the butter in with your hands or use a pastry cutter to do it this is a little bit different I have a little extra flour here I'm gonna flour the pin instead of cutting the butter into the flour I'm going to roll the butter into the flour and what happens here is that instead of making little pea-sized bits it creates these long sheets so this point I have my sheets of butter they're coated in flour I'm just gonna put everything back into the bowl and when you get a little bit more comfortable with this method you can stay on the work surface but it is nice at this point to kind of be contained and this is a little extra but we need three tablespoons of ice water take a fork really just tossing this through I'm not really I'm not trying to do anything with the butter at this stage I'm just trying to distribute that liquid okay so now the moisture has been absorbed or at least distributed so now I'm just rolling it out and it's not supposed to hold together at this point it seems a little bit weird but I'm gonna try to fold the dough onto itself like you would fold a letter into thirds I always start at the top start at the bottom whatever works and just kind of flipping it's not folding I'm just scared of like getting everybody to go to the middle and then starting from the other end and folding up and over but like I said this is a pile of like rubble at this point so don't be weirded out that you don't have dough yet it takes a couple of times and then I just use a straight edge again get everybody back together into a little rectangle using the thing smush it over and just kind of be light I'm like trying not to touch it too much with my hands and then same thing again alright so this is the third time usually when I make this dough that's all it takes but what I can see is that like most of it on the surface has that creamy look of like in an emulsified dough I'm gonna fold it one more time and I'm using my hands to form it into a desk okay if it looks a little drier than does that give me in the past just trust well it sits in the fridge at this point plastic I almost called it clasp clasp dip plastic taking a sheet of plastic wrap and you can actually use the plastic wrap to help gather it without worrying about smashing it down too much so half an hour see you later Stingo Xango I want to frisbee this I know it's not right so I'll just be normal Oh Rhoda's ready okay hold on we're gonna UFO this desk did you play ultimate fling yay cold dough is easier to roll out it also has rested so the gluten isn't so activated and the butter is nice and chilled back down and I'm not gonna get as much sticking and smashing you don't need to go crazy on the flowering but I also don't think there's any great advantage to like under flowering to like you're not don't be a hero you know what I mean give yourself and give the dough the flower that it needs to not stick Chris Morocco taught me turn the dough 90 degrees you guys know Chris Morocco I used to complain why why Chris Morocco why does my dough want to split at the edges so much and he said you know turning it 90 degree is like every other pass of the pin is not overkill I started doing that I did notice an improvement in my cracks around my edges we're using this this is called a removable bottom fluted tart pan and I'm going out to about an eighth of an inch thick alright there's a couple of different ways to get the dough into the pan the method that I like the most is just to take the dough and roll it on to the pin being mindful now not to like press down on the pin because that would smush the dough together and just kind of getting all the way to the end brush as much of it as possible onto your shirt as you go and then instead of bringing the dough to the tart pan bring the tart pan to the dough all right so now you're just going to unroll leaving like leave a lot of slack right you don't want to do this tightly because you want to be able to pick the dough up and push it into the pan starting at one edge kind of just lifting it up and pressing it down so that I call this where the where the floor meets the walls there's good contact I'm just using this like flat part of my knuckle take the rolling pin again and I'm going to use this just a zipper across the dough so now I do want to press down and it's like a giant cookie cutter but from upside-down feels pretty good so and then you get this little skirt of dough so now I'm gonna let the dough chill again just because I have to make the filling anyway first thing just because the butter takes a few minutes to brown I'm just gonna get that started half a stick of butter I'm using my hands for everything today it might be a little bit more than I need but I'd rather have enough to brush around so it's already half melted starting to foam if you like making caramel and kind of watching that magical process of something turning from one thing into another then you will also like making brown butter a lot of excitement in the butter a little bit of swirling and then you can kind of smell it at the moment that it goes from golden to brown and I just want to pull it here it's gonna continue to brown a little bit going slowly I have a few pink lady apples why do I like a pink lady so glad you asked pink ladies are consistent they're available everywhere they hold their shape when they cook they are a good combination of sweet and tart they are crispy but they're not too firm like a Honey Crisp which you bake with it's just like really stays all together so a pink lady is a great apple they definitely do want to core them alright so just using the apple core Wow it's quite a core was a little off-center I think I'm realizing right now as we do this I don't own an apple corer so what I usually do at home is dumb and takes an extra step but I just slice it and then I go back through and maybe I use a spoon or a paring knife to take the cores out this is more efficient but you can tell it basically never done it before this is the other part where you like wow I think it's very dull it's not me and I want to slice these crosswise into rounds and I don't want to cut these super thin that might be pushing it a little bit that's like a quarter of an inch I'm gonna try to go a little thinner than that they look like googly eyes I hate Halloween to be perfectly honest with you I saw my favorite holiday I don't know one year I got egged that wasn't fun another I'm afraid of the masks the scream mask is so scary to me I just kind of get really nervous and then and then as a parent it's like a nightmare because you're basically in an eternal struggle about how much candy am I gonna get this is a lot of apples probably more than we needed there probably could have stopped after three probably maybe because it's this many apples this isn't quite enough sugar this is all fine the sugar is gonna help browning it's not enough to really add like a ton of sweetness and that's that pinch of salt I was talking about and this is a juice of half a lemon which will be I don't know a couple tablespoons and that's for flavor not just it's gonna help the apples not turn brown now all that's left to do is get the apples into the pan and the only layer that really counts is the very top so for the bottom I want to get them kind of close together so that there's nice layers and the finished tart all right I think it looks pretty good I think it's gonna look pretty later here's that brown butter and the milk solids inevitably are gonna have fallen to the bottom I'm so stir it up as you go you get some of these flecks which looks a little bit like vanilla but it's not vanilla and while this cooks the juices are going to come out the juices are gonna mingle with the brown butter they're gonna make a new flavor together they're going even toastier and now I'm just brushing a little bit on the edge of the dough as well it'll give it a little shine the gone this amount of butter was kind of perfect I'm gonna leave the tiniest bit so that when the tart comes out of the oven I can brush it with a little butter and give a little shine at the end so this is going into a 400 degree oven which I believe is ready over here and I'm gonna set a timer for one hour all right one hour has elapsed I'm gonna check on my tart it looks pretty perfect all right so a couple of things that I'm looking for to make sure it's done I want to see deep golden-brown color all the way around the crust the apples on top got really nice color and then just pressing and looking at the ones on the bottom layer I can tell that they're totally tender so it's a perfect time to take it out of the oven so now I'm taking just that tiny bit of residual brown butter that I held back from before and while the tart is still warm I just want to dab just a little dab over the apples to shine them up this butter will soak right in so if you don't have the patience to wait for your tart to cool or even if you do either way this is a good trick so that you're not doing this with the tart in your hand take a bowl regular ordinary Bowl turn it over take your pan just Center it and the ring drops away it was sounds flaky a couple of things I want to show you one is look at the underside of the crust can you guys see that that's because I pressed it really well against a tart bottom and got good contact good heat conductivity 400 degree oven really good color on the bottom there she is beautiful rustic ring of apple tart I hope that you try this try the dough let me know how it goes kind of like blueberry pie I really love seeing pictures of all the pies and stuff that you guys come up with so it's apple picking season it's fall it's late fall it's almost Thanksgiving please make rustic apple tart and let me know how it goes so I'm feeling very PI proud right now or tart proud I should say so let's just get a slice and we can see the different layers all crunchy get a nice little slice and this little crispy edges felt awesome mmm mmm it's good it's very flaky it's really crunchy you can take a little bit of creme fraiche sour cream would work to just get a little dollop going flaky layers of dough many different layers of apples really soft tender ones on the underside really nice firm kind of roasty-toasty guys on the top side I feel like I should try it mmm-hmm another benefit of a tart you can eat it warm pie you have to wait and wait and wait and wait for it to cool down the chart you just get into right away recommend next have a few you got to be in Fanshawe yeah we got it Gabby just gave herself of being facial it's really it's all the ragewe can only film from this side because I forgot to put this earring back in this morning cuz I've slept on it and it was okay and just like do this for the rest of the day hey guys it's Kyle I'm here in the BA test kitchen and today I'm going to make my favorite method for making pastry dough which has no special equipment no food processor and doesn't get messed up and then we're gonna take that dough and make a super rustic apple tart where you don't even peel the apples because why why so super simple all-purpose flour a little bit of salt sugar toss toss just use your your use your hands and then with one of these handy-dandy bench scrapers which I'm gonna use throughout the whole dough making process this is four ounces half a cup of unsalted butter so again just using my hands I'm tossing the butter into the flour mixture and I'm doing that just to coat the outside of these cubes they're gonna want to stick anyway but this way it's kind of like a little bit of insulation okay don't need the cutting board again get that out of there and now another part that I really enjoy is just dumping it right onto the work surface normal pastry dough recipes at this point would tell you to either smash the butter in with your hands or use a pastry cutter to do it this is a little bit different I have a little extra flour here I'm gonna flour the pin instead of cutting the butter into the flour I'm going to roll the butter into the flour and what happens here is that instead of making little pea-sized bits it creates these long sheets so this point I have my sheets of butter they're coated in flour I'm just gonna put everything back into the bowl and when you get a little bit more comfortable with this method you can stay on the work surface but it is nice at this point to kind of be contained and this is a little extra but we need three tablespoons of ice water take a fork really just tossing this through I'm not really I'm not trying to do anything with the butter at this stage I'm just trying to distribute that liquid okay so now the moisture has been absorbed or at least distributed so now I'm just rolling it out and it's not supposed to hold together at this point it seems a little bit weird but I'm gonna try to fold the dough onto itself like you would fold a letter into thirds I always start at the top start at the bottom whatever works and just kind of flipping it's not folding I'm just scared of like getting everybody to go to the middle and then starting from the other end and folding up and over but like I said this is a pile of like rubble at this point so don't be weirded out that you don't have dough yet it takes a couple of times and then I just use a straight edge again get everybody back together into a little rectangle using the thing smush it over and just kind of be light I'm like trying not to touch it too much with my hands and then same thing again alright so this is the third time usually when I make this dough that's all it takes but what I can see is that like most of it on the surface has that creamy look of like in an emulsified dough I'm gonna fold it one more time and I'm using my hands to form it into a desk okay if it looks a little drier than does that give me in the past just trust well it sits in the fridge at this point plastic I almost called it clasp clasp dip plastic taking a sheet of plastic wrap and you can actually use the plastic wrap to help gather it without worrying about smashing it down too much so half an hour see you later Stingo Xango I want to frisbee this I know it's not right so I'll just be normal Oh Rhoda's ready okay hold on we're gonna UFO this desk did you play ultimate fling yay cold dough is easier to roll out it also has rested so the gluten isn't so activated and the butter is nice and chilled back down and I'm not gonna get as much sticking and smashing you don't need to go crazy on the flowering but I also don't think there's any great advantage to like under flowering to like you're not don't be a hero you know what I mean give yourself and give the dough the flower that it needs to not stick Chris Morocco taught me turn the dough 90 degrees you guys know Chris Morocco I used to complain why why Chris Morocco why does my dough want to split at the edges so much and he said you know turning it 90 degree is like every other pass of the pin is not overkill I started doing that I did notice an improvement in my cracks around my edges we're using this this is called a removable bottom fluted tart pan and I'm going out to about an eighth of an inch thick alright there's a couple of different ways to get the dough into the pan the method that I like the most is just to take the dough and roll it on to the pin being mindful now not to like press down on the pin because that would smush the dough together and just kind of getting all the way to the end brush as much of it as possible onto your shirt as you go and then instead of bringing the dough to the tart pan bring the tart pan to the dough all right so now you're just going to unroll leaving like leave a lot of slack right you don't want to do this tightly because you want to be able to pick the dough up and push it into the pan starting at one edge kind of just lifting it up and pressing it down so that I call this where the where the floor meets the walls there's good contact I'm just using this like flat part of my knuckle take the rolling pin again and I'm going to use this just a zipper across the dough so now I do want to press down and it's like a giant cookie cutter but from upside-down feels pretty good so and then you get this little skirt of dough so now I'm gonna let the dough chill again just because I have to make the filling anyway first thing just because the butter takes a few minutes to brown I'm just gonna get that started half a stick of butter I'm using my hands for everything today it might be a little bit more than I need but I'd rather have enough to brush around so it's already half melted starting to foam if you like making caramel and kind of watching that magical process of something turning from one thing into another then you will also like making brown butter a lot of excitement in the butter a little bit of swirling and then you can kind of smell it at the moment that it goes from golden to brown and I just want to pull it here it's gonna continue to brown a little bit going slowly I have a few pink lady apples why do I like a pink lady so glad you asked pink ladies are consistent they're available everywhere they hold their shape when they cook they are a good combination of sweet and tart they are crispy but they're not too firm like a Honey Crisp which you bake with it's just like really stays all together so a pink lady is a great apple they definitely do want to core them alright so just using the apple core Wow it's quite a core was a little off-center I think I'm realizing right now as we do this I don't own an apple corer so what I usually do at home is dumb and takes an extra step but I just slice it and then I go back through and maybe I use a spoon or a paring knife to take the cores out this is more efficient but you can tell it basically never done it before this is the other part where you like wow I think it's very dull it's not me and I want to slice these crosswise into rounds and I don't want to cut these super thin that might be pushing it a little bit that's like a quarter of an inch I'm gonna try to go a little thinner than that they look like googly eyes I hate Halloween to be perfectly honest with you I saw my favorite holiday I don't know one year I got egged that wasn't fun another I'm afraid of the masks the scream mask is so scary to me I just kind of get really nervous and then and then as a parent it's like a nightmare because you're basically in an eternal struggle about how much candy am I gonna get this is a lot of apples probably more than we needed there probably could have stopped after three probably maybe because it's this many apples this isn't quite enough sugar this is all fine the sugar is gonna help browning it's not enough to really add like a ton of sweetness and that's that pinch of salt I was talking about and this is a juice of half a lemon which will be I don't know a couple tablespoons and that's for flavor not just it's gonna help the apples not turn brown now all that's left to do is get the apples into the pan and the only layer that really counts is the very top so for the bottom I want to get them kind of close together so that there's nice layers and the finished tart all right I think it looks pretty good I think it's gonna look pretty later here's that brown butter and the milk solids inevitably are gonna have fallen to the bottom I'm so stir it up as you go you get some of these flecks which looks a little bit like vanilla but it's not vanilla and while this cooks the juices are going to come out the juices are gonna mingle with the brown butter they're gonna make a new flavor together they're going even toastier and now I'm just brushing a little bit on the edge of the dough as well it'll give it a little shine the gone this amount of butter was kind of perfect I'm gonna leave the tiniest bit so that when the tart comes out of the oven I can brush it with a little butter and give a little shine at the end so this is going into a 400 degree oven which I believe is ready over here and I'm gonna set a timer for one hour all right one hour has elapsed I'm gonna check on my tart it looks pretty perfect all right so a couple of things that I'm looking for to make sure it's done I want to see deep golden-brown color all the way around the crust the apples on top got really nice color and then just pressing and looking at the ones on the bottom layer I can tell that they're totally tender so it's a perfect time to take it out of the oven so now I'm taking just that tiny bit of residual brown butter that I held back from before and while the tart is still warm I just want to dab just a little dab over the apples to shine them up this butter will soak right in so if you don't have the patience to wait for your tart to cool or even if you do either way this is a good trick so that you're not doing this with the tart in your hand take a bowl regular ordinary Bowl turn it over take your pan just Center it and the ring drops away it was sounds flaky a couple of things I want to show you one is look at the underside of the crust can you guys see that that's because I pressed it really well against a tart bottom and got good contact good heat conductivity 400 degree oven really good color on the bottom there she is beautiful rustic ring of apple tart I hope that you try this try the dough let me know how it goes kind of like blueberry pie I really love seeing pictures of all the pies and stuff that you guys come up with so it's apple picking season it's fall it's late fall it's almost Thanksgiving please make rustic apple tart and let me know how it goes so I'm feeling very PI proud right now or tart proud I should say so let's just get a slice and we can see the different layers all crunchy get a nice little slice and this little crispy edges felt awesome mmm mmm it's good it's very flaky it's really crunchy you can take a little bit of creme fraiche sour cream would work to just get a little dollop going flaky layers of dough many different layers of apples really soft tender ones on the underside really nice firm kind of roasty-toasty guys on the top side I feel like I should try it mmm-hmm another benefit of a tart you can eat it warm pie you have to wait and wait and wait and wait for it to cool down the chart you just get into right away recommend next have a few you got to be in Fanshawe yeah we got it Gabby just gave herself of being facial it's really it's all the rage\n"