Yes, I know another tart, but with spring in the air there are few things i enjoy more then sitting out in the sunshine with a cooling drink and a slice of summer, that being this beyond delicious apple tart. The base is bursting with flavor and the aromas from the toasted pecans fill your house with warm nutty smells.
This dessert is also great if your having a dinner party and want to have something ready before hand, as it is just as nice eating it room temperature as it is enjoying it hot out of the oven. With all these positives its nearly impossible not to give this a go, AND its made with whole foods that are super good for you! 

For the pecan crust you will need
2 cups of pecans
2 tbs coconut flour
4 tbs coconut oil
8 dates(soaked)
generous pinch of salt

For the maple filling
1 tbs of the pecan crust mixture
1 tbs coconut flour
1 tbs maple syrup
1 tbs prune syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
pinch of salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tbs of water(to loosen)

Apples
4 small apples(cored and sliced)

Firstly, preheat the oven to 120 degrees celsius. Soak the dates in boiling water for about 5 minutes.
Start by making the crust. Add the pecans, coconut flour, salt to the blender. Blitz until you have a fine crumby mixture. Melt the coconut oil and add it to the crumby mix. Drain the soaking water from the dates and add them to the blender. Blitz again until everything comes together, it should hold when pressed against the side.
Reserve one heaped tablespoon of the crust for the maple filling and pour the rest into your tart tin. Press it firmly into the base and up the sides, leave this to the side while you prepare the filling.

For the maple filling, add the the reserved crust mixture to a blender along with the coconut flour, maple syrup, prune syrup, vanilla extract, salt & cinnamon. Blitz everything so that it is well combined. You want a slightly runny consistency, but not too runny so that it will saturated the base. Add a tablespoon at a time to loosen, I only used about a tablespoon and a half. 

I love leaving the skins on the apples as I think it adds extra flavor and colour, so just simply core and slice the apples. Pour the filling into the base of the tart tin and lay the apples on top in a decorative pattern, or just throw them all in, its completely up to you! 
For this one, I just lay the apples down first and then spooned the filling over, but as I said it is whatever you fancy!
Pop it in the oven for 20 minutes, until the apples are soft and golden brown, the base is cooked and aromatic and the filling has hardened up a little.
Leave in the tart tin to cool. When it has completely cooled, cut and serve with some coconut ice-cream.
Enjoy!  

NO REFINED SUGAR

I only like to post 'dirty' recipes that are worth the guilt, and this pie falls nothing short of delivering a mouthwatering mouthful with every bite. The Cognac really adds an extra dimension and heightens the flavor of the tart apples. This is a perfect pie to have at the end of a dinner party or after a Sunday roast. To make this gluten free, substitute the wholewheat flour with gluten free flour or spelt flour.
Simple put, this dessert is to die for. 

Serves: 8-10
CRUST

• 3/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour
• 1/4 cold, unsalted butter
• ½ teaspoon sea salt
• 1 1/2 tablespoons maple syrup
• 2 tablespoons cold water

 
FILLING

• 6 large granny smith apples
• Juice from 1 lemon
• ¼ cup whole wheat pastry flour
• ½ cup maple syrup
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon nutmeg
• ¼ teaspoon cloves
• 1 vanilla bean
• 1 tablespoon melted butter

CUSTARD

• 6 large egg yolks
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 cups milk
• 3/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 3 tablespoons Cognac

TO PREPARE APPLES
Peel and slice apples into even pieces and toss with lemon juice and flour.
In a small pot, combine maple syrup, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. 
Split the vanilla bean in half and scrape out the vanilla into the pot as well. 
Heat over low until the warm and starting to bubble around the edges, whisking occasionally. 
Pour over apples and toss until apples are coated. Let sit for one hour.

TO MAKE CUSTARD FILLING
Combine yolks and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer. Beat on medium high until mixture is pale yellow and thick, 2 to 3 minutes. Reduce speed; add flour, and beat to combine.

Meanwhile, bring milk to a boil in a medium saucepan. Slowly pour half the milk into egg mixture; beat until smooth. Pour mixture back into saucepan; set over medium heat. Whisk until mixture comes to a boil, 6 to 8 minutes. Transfer to large bowl. Stir in vanilla and cognac. Let cool. Cover surface with plastic wrap to prevent a skin from forming.

TO MAKE CRUST
Combine the flour and salt into a bowl and cut in butter with your fingers (or use a food processor).
Once butter are broken down to the size of peas, add maple syrup and 1 tablespoon of water at a time to the mix, stir/kneading until the dough comes together, working dough as little as possible. 
Dump dough onto a flour covered surface and divide into two pieces. 
Form pieces into disc, wrap in plastic, and place in refrigerator for 20 minutes to chill. 
Roll one piece of dough into a large circle, enough to cover a 9″ pie pan with crust hanging over.

Preheat oven to 170˚C.

Pour the apples into the pie pan. 
Then pour the cognac custard on top.
Brush crust with melted butter.
Bake for 45-55 minutes.
Let cool before serving to allow the pie to set slightly.

Sprinkle with icing sugar, serve along side creamy vanilla ice cream. Enjoy!

This pie/crumble is mouthwateringly delicious. And only lasted a few short hours in my house. The toasted almonds have so much flavor and richness. I added some desiccated coconut for even more crunch and texture. You can vary the fillings as you like. I think that really tart fruit like rhubarb or raspberries would work well also. Serve this warm out of the oven with soft ice-cream, or at room temperature simply on its own. 

GO NUTS
A couple of things that are useful to know.
WHOLE NUT - COURSE FLOUR - FINE FLOUR - BUTTER
 

When nuts are put in a blender, the longer amount of time the nuts are left blending, they more they change state.
So taking almonds as an example; 100g of almonds yields 1 cup of almond flour. If your looking for course flour blend for 60 to 90 seconds. For fine almond flour this may take 2-3 minutes. It also depends on how powerful your blender is. I find using the 'S' shape blade creates the best results. Blending the fine almond flour for a further 9-10 minutes will finally create almond butter. I know when actually doing this it almost seems as if your never going to get to the almond butter stage, but trust me you'll get there, don't give up. 
This theory can be put to basically every nut. The softer nuts like cashews and peanuts take a considerably less amount of time than the harder nuts like brazil nuts and almonds.

What you will need

For the crust:

• 2 cups almond flour (made with 210grams of almonds) 
• 1/3 cup medium desiccated coconut
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon powdered gelatin
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 large egg yolk
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter

For the filling

• 4-5 Pink Lady apples, cored and each half cut into 5-6 pieces
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries
• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/8 tsp sea salt

For the crumble topping

• 1 cup almond flour
• 2 tbsp desiccated coconut
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 4 tbsp unsalted butter 

The method

• Firstly pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius .
• Start by making your almond flour. Measure out 200g of almonds and place in a blender. 
• It is up to you how fine you would like your flour, I prefer having it fairly course, it gives the pastry a crunchier texture.
• Add the coconut, salt and powdered gelatin to the blender and pulse just to make sure every thing is incorporated.
• Transfer the dry mix to a bowl and add your egg yolk and butter.
• Use your fingers to rub the butter in the the flour with the egg yolk. 
• You should be looking for a sandy consistency that comes together when pressed with your hands.
• 
  

• Pour the mixture out on to a large piece of cling film and shape into a disk.
• Wrap it up and leave in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. While the pastry is chilling you can get on with your filling.

This pie crust needs to be blind baked. So once refrigerated and rolled out, get your pie dish. Line the pie dish using your cling film. 
Gently lift up the cling film with your pie dough on top, quickly fold it on top of the pie dish and using your fingers and the cling film, press the bottom and the sides of the dough securely to the pie dish. 
Cut off any stragglers that are hanging over the edges.
Get a sheet of greece proof paper and place this on top of the pie dough.
Fill the pie dish with baking beads. I find ceramic work best as this distributes the heat evenly, whilst weighing down the dough.
Bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes until the sides of the pastry start to brown. 
Take the half cooked dough out of the oven, remove the greece proof paper and the ceramic baking beads and cook for another 7 minutes, this will just secure that the pastry is fully cooked, and prevent a soggy base!

• Slice your apples in half and cut each half into 4 or 5 slices. This is the correct size for an apple thats quite soft with just a little bit of bite.
• Place the apple in a heavy saucepan on medium heat. 
• Add the butter and brown sugar to the sauce pan. Make sure all the apple is coated.
• Cook for 5-7 minutes until the apples just beings to soften.
• A lovely juice should have formed at the bottom of the saucepan.
• Coarsely chop the walnuts and add with the cinnamon, cranberries and vanilla.
• You can optionally add honey for an added bit of sweetness.
• Cook for a further 5 minutes. 
• Take off heat and allow stand while you prepare the crumb topping.

So to make the crumble topping. This entire bit can be done in the blender.

• Make almond flour in same way as mentioned above.
• Add desiccated coconut, vanilla, brown sugar and butter to the blender.
• Pulse until everything comes together, this should happen fairly quickly.

For the assembly 

• Add all the filling with the delicious sweet juices that accompany it to the half baked pastry base.
• Crumble the topping evenly over the apples.
• Place in the middle of your oven and bake for 20-25 minutes.
• This may need more time depending on how hard your apples were going in. So, to check, simply put a knife through the crumble and apples and feel if the desired texture is reached.

Not only are the ingredients in these little parcels of joy so healthy and nutritious for you, they completely add to the flavor of the tarts. I woke up this morning with the urge to bake (as I do practically every morning). I opened the fridge and saw a packet of brambly apples (cooking apples), and with apples being one of my favourite things to put in desserts, I started to get baking. 
I made this recipe as I went along, just grabbing what I saw in the kitchen and thought would work well together. Not knowing how these would turn out, I was not expecting much, BUT these are sensational!  I was so surprised to see how quick and easy it was to make these also. I think this is a must try recipe if your feeling like something sweet and healthy. 

Yields 10.
So here is what you will need:

• 1 cup of pecan flour
• 1/2 cup of almond flour
• Pinch of salt 
• Pinch of cinnamon
• 1 tsp of vanilla essence
• 2 tsp of honey
• 8 prunes
• 1 egg white
• 1 brambly apple
• 1/3 cup of sultanas
• Juice of half a lemon
• GREASEPROOF PAPER. NB 

Firstly;

• Get a regular cupcake tin and spray each mould with cooking spray or rub with butter or oil. 
• Get a sheet of baking paper roughly about the same size as your cupcake tray. Fold the paper in half, then in quarters, then in eights, so your left with a square with many layers. Each one of these layers is going to be a disc to line the cupcake tray. So cut one circle from your folded paper, and you should come out with 16 circles. 
• Line the cupcake tray with the parchment circles, ensuring that the paper sticks to the sides.

Then,

• Make your flour.
• Get one cup of pecans, add to blender and pulse until it is a fine sandy consistency. It is okay if there are still some bigger pieces of pecan left in flour, this adds to the texture of the pastry. 

The prunes in this recipe  are treated similarly.

• Add 8 prunes to your blender and pulse till you get a wet paste. This is the part that will help bind all the dry ingredients together.

Now that you have all your preparation done you can start making pastry.

• Heat oven to 170 degrees Celsius.
• In a mixing bowl, add pecan flour, almond flour, salt & cinnamon.
• Stir to combine dry ingredients.
• Separate egg and add egg white and honey to dry ingredients.
• Mix through the mixture with a spatula.
• Add the prune paste until the pastry comes together. It will be fairly moist. 

This part is fiddly and takes a couple of times to get used to it. To make it easy for yourself, use wet fingertips and make sure your spoon is always wet, this way the pastry will not stick to everything!

• Section off about 1/8 of the mixture, this is going to be used as the base for the pies.
• Put a golf ball size drop of pastry in each cupcake mould.
• Press the pastry up the sides of the tin using your wet teaspoon and fingers.
• Then with the pastry that you sectioned off, press a little bit down in each mould to form the base of the pastry case.
• I found this the easiest way to fill the cupcake tin.

The filling.

• Leave the skin on the bramble apple.
• Chop in half and thinly slice each half.
• Cut the thinly sliced halves in to quarters (like small pizza slices)
• Fill the pastry cups with the apple, having the skin facing upwards.
• Squirt a few drops of lemon juice on top of the apples.
• Top with a few sultanas, a sprinkle of sugar & cinnamon.
• Bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes, or until the edges of the pastry has started to turn brown and the apple is tender.

When its time to take out these delicious little pastries, as tempting as they are, leave them in the tin for 5 to 10 minutes, to allow cool slightly. If you take them out too soon the pastry will fall apart. The baking paper also does a great job helping everything stay in place. When the long drooling 10 minutes is over, use a flat spatula to take them out of the cupcake shells.
Serve with custard or ice-cream or simply enjoy them on their own. I absolutely adore them when they are just out of the oven, the tender brambly apple is perfectly warm and tart, and the base is moist and packed with flavor.