AS THE SEASON of apples wanes, the baker of tartes tatins is left bereft. For quite a number of years I was such a baker, despite a domestic resistance founded in part on a tepidness about apples and on a certain oblique resentment at being served the same dessert more than once. Yet, so long as there were apples, I soldiered on, turning out tartes tatins right and left. Domestic resistance could say what it would; I liked and enjoyed making them. They were quite easy and turned out to be little triumphs of glossy elegance.

But the baking of pastry, involving as it must great gobs of butter and heaps of sugar, can become problematic, weight-wise, with the passing of time. A fresh apple is a low-calorie apple. And so my great tarte tatin operation fell into dormancy for the past few years – at least until an evening last week, when a small dinner party called for a dessert. I had no apples other than a few oversweet ones (the best baking apples always have an edge of sourness), but I did have bananas.

In Emily Luchetti's Four-Star Desserts there is a recipe for a banana tarte tatin. I'd made it once and not been happy with the outcome, the awkwardness of bananas sliced lengthwise being a chief complaint. Still, I liked the idea, and why not simply adapt the classic tarte tatin recipe I'd used forever, by slicing the bananas crosswise into rounds? It is generally not advisable to experiment on dinner guests, but this time I did, a little, and I got away with it. Here is my secret:

Make the pastry by putting a cup of all-purpose flour (with a pinch of salt) in the bowl of a food processor. With the machine running, add three-quarters of a stick of cold butter, cut into pats. The result should be something like cornmeal. Dribble in two or three tablespoons of ice water, machine running, and let the dough form a ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate.

Caramel: Melt a stick of sweet butter in an eight- or nine-inch nonstick skillet; add a cup of sugar and three tablespoons of water and cook over medium-high heat. It will bubble thickly, then start to turn golden; at this point remove from heat and stir for even color. Fold in two or three bananas, peeled, sliced into rounds, and drizzled with lemon juice. Roll the chilled pastry into a thin disk slightly wider than the pan. Fit pastry over pan, working the edges inside the pan's rim. Set on a cookie sheet and bake at 425 degrees for 25 minutes. Invert onto a platter and serve.

Paul Reidinger