Appeltaart is a Spiced, Dutch Masterpiece

Baked in a tall, straight-sided pan, it features densely packed, liberally spiced, lightly sweetened apples (and often raisins) encased in a substantial, cookie-like crust that’s crunchy where the pastry meets the pan and velvety where it sits against the fruit filling. The towering construction slices neatly and is usually served at room temperature “met slagroom,” meaning with a mountain of whipped cream.

As I polished off my slice at Winkel 43, the iconic cafe and appeltaart destination in Amsterdam’s Jordaan district, I noted that, for all its apparent grandeur, appeltaart seemed achievable—and certainly easier to make than American apple pie.

It’s the crust that makes appeltaart so doable. Rather than layered and flaky like American pie pastry, it’s uniform—more like sugar cookie dough with the fat evenly distributed throughout the mix, so there’s none of that “butter in pea-size pieces” fuss that’s imperative to creating distinct layers.

Consequently, there’s no need to cut butter into the flour. In fact, I found that you don’t even need to soften it and work it into the dough, as many Dutch recipes instruct. You can simply melt it and stir it along with an egg into the dry mix (flour, brown sugar, baking powder, and salt) using a bowl and a spatula. 

And here’s the best bit of news I discovered: You don’t have to roll out the dough for the bottom or sides of the crust.

Dough made with melted butter has a malleable, clay-like consistency, so I broke two-thirds of it into chunks and simply pressed them into an even layer along the base and walls of a springform pan. I then refrigerated it until it was time to add the filling. I did need to chill and roll the other third of the dough for cutting into strips that I’d crisscross over the filling, but handling the Play-Doh–like mass was easy.

For the sake of efficiency, I got it into the fridge before I started the press-in-the-pan work.

Once you enclose raw apples in a crust, you have little control over how they’ll behave. Ideally they bake up tender and intact, but sometimes they turn mushy, or they remain firm so that the filling tumbles out instead of clinging gently to itself. 

Fortunately, you can often help control the way they bake if you parcook them before sealing them in the crust. Years ago we discovered that gently heating apples softens them and converts their pectin to a heat-stable form that prevents them from turning mushy when cooked further.

The key is to keep the temperature of the apples around 140 degrees during this precooking stage.

After coring, peeling, and slicing 4 pounds of Golden Delicious apples, I cooked them with a little brown sugar in a covered Dutch oven until they were slightly softened. I spread them on a baking sheet to cool and then mixed them with a handful of golden raisins, a slew of warm spices to mimic the traditional Dutch blend called speculaaskruiden, lemon juice for brightness, and a little cornstarch to thicken any juices that would otherwise sog out the crust. 

I packed them into my lined springform pan and cut the remaining dough into strips, which I arranged over the apples in a traditional Dutch crisscross pattern—easier than a lattice and just as effective for allowing excess moisture to escape. For subtle sheen, I brushed the top with beaten egg (reserved from the one I’d added to the dough). I baked my appeltaart for about 75 minutes, covering it with foil partway through to prevent the top from getting too dark. 

What emerged was simply majestic: a crisp, fine-textured crust surrounding an absolute mountain of tender but intact, glistening, spice-speckled apples and raisins. It sliced like a dream, too, each statuesque wedge befitting the appeltaart’s occasion-worthy role.