Très grande tarte tatin

Went to start my tarte tatin and as usual as soon as I went to open the can of pears, our cordless electric can opener died. And we don't have a manual one. The odd thing is, as soon as it dies, it's done. When you plug it in, you have to wait about twenty minutes before you can use it plugged in.

Then I started working on the sugar syrup and I was working on this blog entry at the same time and the sauce reduced down to the point where I thought I had burned my pan. Interestingly, I think this is how it's supposed to work. The color is perfect and it's reduced by about half. And my tatins are always a tad runny so this may explain why... I am too impatient with the syrup and use it prematurely.

After an irate phone call from a friend and a facebook message from another friend experiencing some career difficulties, I can still only get the can half open...

For my syrup, I used about a half cup of the pear juice from the can of pears (I used a church key to extract it) and less than 1/4 cup sugar. I swirled and boiled this until it reduced and turned vivid amber. I poured it back in the pyrex measuring cup and it seemed to be about 1/4 cup syrup. I added another 1/4-ish cup pear juice to the hot pan and used a silicone rubber spatula to scrap the stuff from the bottom of the pan. It all turned amber about immediately though it did not reduce. I pour it into the measuring cup and stirred.

Next, while waiting for my pears:

• Cream 12 tablespoons room temp unsalted butter
• With about 1 cup granulated sugar

Lower speed and beat in one at a time:

• 5 large eggs, also room temp

Now at this point, the Ina Garten's recipe calls for 2/3 cup sour cream. I have a nice amount more than 1/3 cup but no where near 2/3. This is also when you add 1 teaspoon lemon zest and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Since sour cream is like a liquid, maybe I'll add a teaspoon of lemon juice. Yeah. I'll do that as I don't have lemons to zest. Oh, and cool... upon closer review of the fridge I found sour cream from the tacos I got via take-out last week... 2 ounces... awesome!

Sift together in separate bowl:

• 2 heaping cups unbleached white flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon iodized sea salt

At this point, I'm going to fight more with my can opener and try to get my pears... I got one 29 ounce can open but it stalled (AGAIN) 3/4 of the way through the 15 ounce can... And I think I'll need another 15 ounce can. UGGH.

Okay, so once that last can is open... (In pried open the nearly open one, like Popeye and his spinach) I can finish nicely arranging my pears, cover them with syrup, combine the dry and wet ingredients pour over the pears and bake at 350 for about 35 minutes. This project has already taken 90 minutes and normally, I would have eaten a slice of tatin by now. This is almost too frustrating to bring to International Poetry Night.

Update... 2 hrs later from when this project started and the tatin has finally made it into the oven. I had exactly the least amount of pears as I could get away with. I arranged them nicely and then poured the batter on, only to realize when I got all the batter into the pan that I forgot the syrup.

So I very carefully poured the syrup into the spouts on my Le Creuset skillet and tilted the skillet in hopes of the syrup making it to the pears on the bottom, a slow and steady process. The syrup all disappeared so I can only hope it was successful.

Now we wait for it to come out of the oven and see... fingers crossed.