The other day while I was photo grazing over at TasteSpotting, I came across Confessions of a Tart, she had just posted apple and ricotta tartlets. What caught my eye was that instead of a pastry crust, she used sliced apples. What a great idea! A dessert I don't have to feel guilty about eating, and besides that, it just sounded so good to me. I knew I was going to make this.

I wanted to change mine up a bit, so I decided to add some rum soaked golden raisins to the ricotta mixture, which turned out adding great flavor to the ricotta. Basically you slice apples very thin, and then you arrange them in overlapping circles inside muffin cups. Irene had a great visual on this so take a look at her photo here. This takes a little time and patience, and as you can see from my little tart above, my apple layering didn't turn out nearly as pretty as Irene's.

So I decided to pull out my little 8" spring form pan, butter up the sides and bottom and then layered my apples around the bottom and along the side. As soon as I spread the ricotta mixture down it served as a wall and I added more apple slices in layers along the side. This was way easier for me to handle, and I think the result turned out nice. What do you think?


The only thing I would suggest if you use a spring form pan, is to wrap tin foil around the bottom and lower sides so that none of the juice from the apple slices will seep through and smoke up your oven.

Here's the ingredients:

This recipe makes 8 tartlets, but you can double or triple the recipe, if you want to make more than 8, or if you want to use a spring form pan.

**Rum soaked golden raisins.

**4 firm apples, peeled, cut, cored and sliced thin for layering.

**8oz. of ricotta cheese.

**4T of sugar.

**1 egg.

Drain your raisins and sprinkle on top of your ricotta mixture.

Bake 350F for 30-35 minutes until set and puffed. If you're making the tartlets let them cool and remove them gently with a tablespoon, I found that worked well. Taste great warm or cold!

We throughly enjoyed ever bite of this!

Buon Appetito!!