Welcome winter with Alison’s apple tart and a cup of coffee

Pastry chef Alison Greenlees said being in the kitchen has been a part of her life from as early as she can remember. Starting as a toddler and licking clean the mixing bowls and wooden spoons her mother used while making cakes and cookies, through to her high school years, where she spent every free moment in the kitchen creating pastries and other delicious things to eat.

“I just love being in the kitchen,” she said. “It’s my happy place and I and knew from a very early age that baking was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”

The 24-year-old Sandbaai resident is now the pastry chef at Hame, a popular restaurant and whisky bar in Hermanus.

Greenlees grew up in Johannesburg and, after matriculating in 2019, enrolled at Capsicum Culinary Studio’s Rosebank campus for the Professional Patisserie Course.

Alison’s Apple Tart ingredients:

For the pastry:

200 g unsalted butter, at room temperature

100 g icing sugar

300 g flour

1tsp vanilla essence

1 egg

Pinch of salt

Method:

Cream butter until smooth and light in colour. Add in icing sugar and beat together for 1 minute. Stir in the egg and vanilla essence, then add the flour and salt and mix until just combined. Don’t over mix. Wrap in clingfilm and allow to rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour. While it is resting, make the apple tart filling.Alis

Ingredients:

For the filling

4 apples

45 g flour

115 g unsalted butter

100 g brown sugar

100 g caster sugar

1 to 2 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp salt

¼ cup water

Method

Preheat oven to 180 °C. Place all the ingredients in a sauce pan and heat until butter has melted, and sugar is slightly dissolved and you have a thick but runny consistency. Remove from heat and set aside to cool slightly.

While the filling cools, remove the dough from the fridge and using two thirds of it, spread it out in a tart dish, ensuring an even spread on the base and sides of the dish.

You do not need to roll the dough out, just press it into the dish in small sections. Next, peel, core and slice the apples and arrange them on the tart base. Use the other third of the dough to cover the apple slices. Have fun with the design for your top pastry, but a simple lattice works beautifully. Roll the pastry and cut into 1,3 cm wide strips.

Arrange the lattice on top of the apples, allowing for decent gaps between the pastry to accommodate the filling. Once the pastry top has been completed, grab your cinnamon filling and pour over the lattice, allowing it to run between all the gaps and gather around the apples. Do not over-fill. This filling should not drown the apples, a little goes a long way.

Place in the oven and bake until golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes to allow the pastry to firm up. Removing it from the dish too soon will cause the pastry to break.

Serve warm with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream or a dollop of whipped cream.