Apple Tart with a Crunchy Caramelised Almond Topping

Weigh out the butter and cut it into cubes, that way it softens evenly. It has to be at room temperature: your finger should press a dent into it without resistance. Cold butter takes in no air, and without air the dough turns crumbly instead of short.

Add the granulated sugar and the two pinches of salt and beat everything with the hand mixer until the mass has clearly turned lighter and visibly gained volume. That takes two to three minutes, anything shorter is not enough.

Pour the whisked whole egg in a thin stream while the mixer is running. Tipping it all in at once is the most common mistake: egg and butter then separate, the mass looks curdled and never turns smooth again.

Then add the White flour and mix only until no dry flour is visible anymore. From here on the rule is: the less you work it, the shorter the dough becomes. Whoever kneads for long builds up gluten, and a shortcrust pastry with gluten turns hard and shrinks during baking.

Bring the crumbly mass together briefly with your hands until a dough forms, press, do not knead. Place it on cling film and press it into a flat, as square as possible slab.

Flat is not for looks: a slab chills all the way through in an hour, a ball only on the outside, and afterwards it rolls out without effort. Into the fridge for about an hour.

Brush the Tart tin thinly with soft butter using the brush, including the grooves at the edge, otherwise the dough sticks there. Add a little flour, turn the tin and tap out the excess flour. Butter and flour together are your insurance that the baked tart will release later.

Roll out the chilled dough on a little flour. If you have rolling guides, place them on the left and right: they give the same thickness everywhere, and an even thickness means an even baking time. Around 3 to 4 millimetres is right.

Using a ring slightly larger than the tin, cut a circle out of the dough, that way you have enough dough all around for the edge and only have to trim off a little afterwards.

Lift the circle carefully and lay it into the tin. Press it in without stretching, especially carefully into the corner between base and edge: if air stays there, the edge sinks during baking. Finally press the dough into the grooves of the edge and cut off the overhang with the knife along the rim. Put the lined tin back into the fridge until the filling is ready, cold dough holds its shape while baking. You do not need to blind bake the base: it goes raw under the filling, and base, filling and crisp topping bake together at the end.

Peel the apples, remove the core and cut them into even cubes. Even here means: they all turn soft at the same time.

Put the cubes into a pan, sprinkle 25 g of the granulated sugar over them and cook them down over medium heat. Stir now and then. The apples should only turn slightly soft, they finish baking later in the tart, and whoever cooks them to mush here will have no pieces left in the filling.

Transfer them to a bowl and let them cool until they are lukewarm at most. This is not optional: hot apples melt the beaten butter in the mass, and the air you are about to beat in would be gone again.

Here too the rule is: room-temperature butter. Beat it with the 20 g of granulated sugar until pale and fluffy, just as with the dough. The rest of the sugar is already with the apples.

Pour in the whisked whole egg and the milk little by little and stir well each time. In our version there is no yoghurt. All the liquid comes from the 40 g of milk. If the mixture looks slightly curdled at some point, that is no problem: as soon as the flour goes in, it becomes smooth again. Mix the flour dry with the Baking powder beforehand, otherwise pockets of baking powder remain, which end up as bitter spots in the cake.

Fold the cooled apples into the mixture with the dough scraper. Fold, do not stir, so the air you beat in earlier stays put.

Fill everything into the prepared shortcrust pastry base and smooth the surface with the scraper. Take a moment for this: whatever is uneven in height now will stay that way after baking, and the crunchy topping over it makes every dent visible.

Put granulated sugar and Glucose syrup into a medium-sized pan and let both melt over medium heat into a pale caramel. Do not stir with a spoon, but swirl the pan: stirring brings sugar crystals from the edge back into the mixture, and around them the caramel turns grainy. Pale means pale. If it goes dark brown, it tastes bitter.

Add honey and butter; it hisses and foams up briefly, that is part of it. Clip in the sugar thermometer and cook the mixture to 110 °C. This number is the real trick of the recipe: below it the topping stays sticky and pulls threads, well above it it turns glass-hard. Finally add the flaked almonds, take the pan off the heat immediately and fold them in until every flake is coated.

And now work quickly: spread the still-hot crunchy topping evenly over the filling with the scraper. The mixture sets fast as it cools. Once it has set, it can no longer be spread. It does not have to be gap-free, as it flows together a little more during baking.

Bake the tart for 20 to 30 minutes at 180 °C fan, until the almond topping is glossy golden brown and the pastry edge is lightly browned. Then place it in the tin on a cake rack and let it cool completely. Do not cut this short: the crunchy topping is still soft when warm and only becomes crunchy as it cools. Release the cooled tart from the tin using the lifting base, dust the edge with icing sugar and decorate it however you like.