Rustic apple galettes with honey and thyme

Rustic apple galettes with honey and thyme

September is here, the air is getting crisper, the leaves have started to turn golden, and autumn is on its way. Maybe it’s the season, or maybe its the fact that Rosh Hashanah is looming, but this time of year is all about APPLES. Crisp, juicy, sweet, fresh, delicious, ripe, lovely seasonal APPLES.

I know that apple and cinnamon is the classic combination, but I recently discovered that apple and thyme is a really fantastic pairing. Even if you don’t make this recipe, I urge you to try them together in something. I usually use thyme only in savoury dishes, but it works amazingly well with the apples in these sweet little rustic galettes. The flavours complement each other brilliantly.



The only other ingredient in the filling is some honey – it wouldn’t be Rosh Hashanah without apples and honey! If you can get hold of a thyme honey that would be gorgeous, but if not, any strong flavoured honey will do. I used a heather honey and the aroma as these galettes were baking was just divine! My house smelled of sweet, fragrant honey for several hours. Mmmmmm. Such a cosy, autumnal smell.

The pastry for these little apple galettes is very simple to make, but it doesn’t like the heat! You need to roll and shape quickly if your kitchen is even remotely warm. I made these on a very warm day indeed and the dough was almost impossible to handle. Fortunately, the ‘rustic’ look is part of the charm of these tasty tarts, so even if the pastry doesn’t behave quite as you’d wish, they’ll come out looking A-OK once they’re baked. And of course they taste amazing. After all, the reason the pastry is tricky is because it contains a ton of butter! Yum.

I had planned to serve these with some crumbly goats cheese for the adventurous, and vanilla ice-cream for the not-so-adventurous (Kipper) but they actually didn’t need any additional accompaniment. They are fragrant, delicious and sweet just as they are.