Apple Tart

Notes

• If using margarine, use less than you would of butter — its lower melting point makes the dough a little too soft at times.
• If you take a while getting the filling into the tart and the apples start releasing water, drain it (and to taste, add a little more cinnamon).

Ingredients

Dough

• 300g self-raising flour
• 1 free-range egg
• 175g cold butter (or 150g margarine)
• 125g caster sugar
• a pinch of salt

Filling

• 1kg hard sour apples
• 50g sugar
• 50g currants
• 50g raisins
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 3 tsp lemon juice

Method

Apple mix

1. Soak the currants and raisins.
2. Peel and chop the apples.
3. When the currants and raisins are well-soaked, squeeze the water out of them.
4. Mix the apples, sugar, currants, raisins, cinnamon and lemon juice.

Tart

1. Preheat the oven to 175°C for top-bottom heating, or 165°C fan. Prepare the rack in the lower third of the oven.
2. Grease and line a springform cake pan or tart tin. I use a large springform cake pan.
3. Beat the egg with a fork.
4. Cube the butter (keep it cold).
5. Add the flour, sugar, butter, salt and ⅔ of the egg to a bowl. Mix.
6. Knead the mix until a cohesive dough forms.
7. Use ¾ of the dough to line the tin (half on the bottom, half for the sides if using a springform pan). You want raised edges around 3cm.
8. With the remaining ¼, roll little ropes of dough that will become the criss-cross pattern.
9. Add the apple mixture into the tart.
10. Working quickly (so the apple juice doesn’t start to leak into the base before baking), flatten the ropes into flat strips and lay them across the top in a lattice.
11. Brush the pattern with the rest of the egg (add a little milk to make it go further if you need).
12. Bake for 1 hour 15 minutes, until done and browned.
13. Let the tart cool in the pan until the crust is firm, then remove from the pan.