French Apple Tart recipe

Okay so I promised the French apple tart recipe.
It's no secret to anyone who knows me that up until a few months ago I DID NOT cook. I completely refused to participate in anything mildly domestic for fear of falling into those pesky female roles. I wanted to grab my feminism by the balls, and say NO to the kitchen.

Both my parents are fantastic cooks, like everything from scratch cooks. And when my mom would try to teach me, I would sigh, roll my eyes and huff and puff til she let me go. I only ate cereal and toast and ice cream for like maybe the last 5 years. My mom used to always joke that I'm the vegetarian that refused to eat vegetables. So now I've grown up and got hungry for more than Lucky Charms, and since I lost my job, I have more time on my hands. As a scientist I realized that cooking is very scientific, and I like a challenge, so I'm attempting to cook.

I really like the Barefoot Contessa recipes, she makes things sound so fancy but to make them is so easy. This recipe is one of hers, I made it the other day for a birthday party and everyone loved it, as did I, and I am picky.

I'm making it again for a dinner party tomorrow night; along with Sole in a lemon butter sauce and a pear, endive, roquefort salad. I'll let you know how it all pans out.

This recipe looks so fancy once its done, but it is REALLY easy and for not much work at all tastes delicious. Those sneaky French.

For the pastry (you can buy one if you want instead but this is actually not hard at all):
-2 cups of all purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt
- 1 tablespoon of sugar
- 1.5 sticks of cold unsalted butter, diced
- 1/2 cup of ice water

Put the flour, salt, and sugar in a food processor with a steel blade, pulse for a few seconds to combine all the dry ingredients. Add the butter and pulse a few times until the butter is in small chunks about the size of a pea.
With the processor running continuously, add the ice water and run until the dough starts to come together. Once it has, knead it on a floured board until its one doughy mass and quickly put in the fridge wrapped in plastic to sit for 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 400, and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

For the apples:
- 4 granny smith apples
- 1/2 cup of sugar
- 1/2 stick of cold unsalted butter, diced.
- 1/2 cup apricot jam

Peel and core, the apples, cut apple slices crosswise about a 1/4 inch thick slices. Throw them in a bowl with the 1/2 cup of sugar and lightly toss them until they are all completely covered in the sugar.

Roll the dough to be a rectangle of about 10 to 14 inches, place the dough on the cookie sheet.

Place overlapping slices of apples diagonally down the middle of the tart and continue making diagonal rows on both sides of the middle row until the pastry is completely covered with the apple slices. Dot the top of the apples with the butter.

Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour (I actually found this to be a bit long for a pastry at 400, I actually took it out at about 36 minutes and it was done) until the pastry is browned and the edges of the apples are starting to brown.

When the tart is done, heat the apricot jam on the stove (I did it in the microwave cause I'm lazy and I wanted to eat the damn thing) and brush the top of the pastry with the warm apricot jam until the top is glazed.

Remove from the cookie sheet with a metal spatula, allow to cool and serve at room temperature.

Enjoy!