I wanted my Thanksgiving dessert to be easy to make and store this year. I know cheesecake is very popular this time of the year, but it was a little more work than I wanted to put in. My next choice was pie, but it had to be a single crust. I wasn’t in the mood to attempt latticework. Then I came across this Salted Caramel Apple Galette, and I knew my search was over. This rustic deconstructed pie was the answer! Apples and cinnamon are perfect for this holiday, and it doesn’t even need a pie pan. My Thanksgiving dinners are pretty informal, so this galette recipe fits right in. Let’s give it a try!
You can find my 2022 Thanksgiving Menu as a free downloadable Google Doc. It includes a schedule, a shopping list, and an equipment list. The checkboxes on the lists are interactive and cross off each item when you click them. You may also print it or save it and make any changes you like.
From scratch salted caramel apple galette is as delicious and impressive as pie, but half the work! This easy fall dessert is complete with homemade pie crust and a drizzle of salted caramel. Serve with a scoop of ice cream for the ultimate indulgence!
The Ingredients
The ingredients for this Salted Caramel Apple Galette were the same as your typical apple pie with a few extras for the sauce. There is a link included for homemade salted caramel sauce. I know I could have bought it, but I made the caramel sauce because it’s so easy.
The only question I had while making my shopping list was shat type of apples to use. Thankfully the recipe lists a few suggestions. I chose to use a mix of Granny Smith and Fuji apples.
The Granny Smith apples are tart and crisp while the Fuju apples are sweet and have a softer texture. My favorite apple pie recipe uses both, so I did that here too. Using both gives a nice mix of flavor and texture.
The Process
There were a few parts to making this Salted Caramel Apple Galette: salted caramel sauce, crust, filling, and baking. I started on it the day before I planned to make the galette. I’m not the greatest baker, but it was pretty easy to make.
Homemade Salted Caramel
I made the salted caramel sauce the day before making the galette. It only has 4 ingredients, so prep work was a quick 3 minutes of gathering and measuring them out.
Things started off with melting the sugar in a saucepan. The recipe says to avoid nonstick but not why. I’m guessing it’s so you can see the color of the sugar as it melts. I do the same thing when making browned butter. Perhaps it’s because a dark nonstick pan makes it hard to see the color and easier to burn.
I stirred the sugar for 5-6 minutes before it began clumping and melting. It felt like forever, but things moved fast once the sugar melted. Once the sugar completely melted and turned an amber color I added the salted butter. I noticed some clumps and followed the instructions to remove them, but no joy.
I kept going, though, and slowly poured in the heavy cream. The mixture bubbled a little more than it did when I added the butter, but it wasn’t bad. There was no popping or spattering.
After letting the mixture boil for another minute I removed the pan from the heat and added the salt. It still had clumps in it, so I used a mesh strainer to remove them while transferring the sauce to a storage container. I left the sauce on the counter to cool before putting the lid on and refrigerating.
Making the Crust
The next step in this recipe was making the dough. I did this the next day. Galette crust is the same as pie crust—mostly flour and cold butter. Some call for a food processor, but this one was mixed by hand.
The recipe says to use a pastry cutter or 2 forks to work the butter into the dry ingredients. I have a pastry cutter so that’s what I used. The dough was a bit dry and I did add the extra 1 tablespoon of cold water mentioned in the instructions. Otherwise, the crust came together perfectly. I had it made into a disk and wrapped in plastic in just a few minutes.
Making the Apple Filling
The filling took about the same amount of time to make as the crust. I started out by peeling the apples with a vegetable peeler. Then I cored them with an apple corer/slicer. If you happen to have a hand-cranked apple peeler/corer/slicer you can do everything at once. I do but I kind of forgot about it LOL!
The wedges needed to be cut into thinner pieces, so I used a chef’s knife to cut each wedge lengthways into 3-4 thin pieces. Once that was done all I had to do was mix the slices with the rest of the filling ingredients and chill for an hour.
Assembling & Baking the Salted Caramel Apple Galette
The dough finished chilling a few minutes before the filling giving me time to roll it out and place it onto a parchment paper-lined sheet pan. Tip: The dough needs to be rolled into a 12-inch circle. I use a floured 17'x12' cutting board as a work surface so I don’t have to measure.
Once I moved the flattened dough onto the sheet pan I drained the chilled filling using a large colander. Then I placed the pieces of apple onto the galette dough and pinched the sides up to contain them.
A short bake for 35 minutes and my Salted Caramel Apple Galette. I let it cool then wrapped it tightly and stored it in the refrigerator until dinner the next day. Removing it and the salted caramel sauce from the oven about 2 hours before dinner brought them up to room temperature for serving. Of course, you can always reheat it if you wish to serve it warm (the microwave is perfect for this if the oven is tied up).
Timing
The recipe for the galette and sauce both list prep, cook, and total times. My times came very close. I’m listing them below with the recipe times in parentheses.
Homemade Salted Caramel
- 3 minutes to prep (5 minutes)
- 22 minutes to cook (15 minutes)
- 25 minutes total (20 minutes)
Salted Caramel Apple Galette
- 1 hour 23 minutes to prep (1 hour 20 minutes)
- 11 minutes to prep the crust
- 1 hour to chill
- 10 minutes to prep the filling (done while the dough chilled)
- 12 miutes to assemble
- 35 minutes to bake
- 2 hours 8 minutes total (2 hours 10 minutes)
My time was slightly over on the sauce and slightly under on the galette itself. Overall, the total time was very close to what the recipes listed.
