Serves 6

You will need an 8" removable base flan tin, ceramic baking beans

Ingredients

For the pastry case

50g sorghum

50g white rice

50g potato starch

25g almonds

20g ground linseeds

20g sugar

95g unsalted butter

1tsp guar gum

pinch salt

1 medium free-range egg, beaten

2tsp lemon juice

2tsp cold water

For the filling

2 1/2 eating apples

1 large cooking apple

1/4 tsp good quality powdered vanilla

2 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp water

1tbsp lemon juice

lemon zest

1 tbsp apricot jam

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 180℃

1. Weigh dry ingredients into a bowl, and blend in the butter with an electric whisk or a food mixer, or rub the fat into the flour by hand using your fingertips, getting lots of air into the mixture. Stop mixing as soon as the mixture starts to clump together - seconds after the fine crumb stage.
2. Add the beaten egg, the water and the lemon juice and briefly mix again
3. Form the dough into a round flat shape, cover with cling film and refrigerate for at least one hour.
4. Carefully roll out the pastry between 2 sheets of cling film, rolling from the centre outwards, until it is just under 1/2cm thick.
5. Peel back the top layer of cling film, and lifting from underneath the bottom layer, turn the pastry over and ease it into the flan tin - the cling film helps to position it. Push any gaps together with your fingertips.
6. Prick the base with a fork, line it with parchment paper and using ceramic beans to weight it down lightly, bake blind for 10 minutes at 180*C, and a further 10 minutes without the beans, then remove from the oven and set aside to cool.
7. Set aside half an eating apple for decoration, peel, core and chop the rest of the fruit.
8. Cook the prepared fruit very slowly with the sugar and water and lemon juice in a saucepan with a tightly fitting lid, keep stirring to make sure the mixture doesn't stick.
9. When the apples soften, liquidise the cooked mixture with a stick blender, or push through a sieve or mouli, and pour it into the prepared and cooked pastry case. Sprinkle lemon zest over the surface of the apple mixture.
10. Take the last half apple, slice very thinly and arrange the slices fanwise around the surface of the apple mixture.
11. Bake for 25 minutes at 180*C. The apple slices should barely begin to brown, and remove from the oven,
12. Warm the apricot jam in a non-stick saucepan, and brush the hot tart gently with the warm jam to glaze, then leave to cool before removing from the tin to serve with a home-made blackberry compote, ricotta and honey, or home-made mint sorbet - or a combination of all three!