Free-form Apple Pie

This tart could be made with different fruits, or a combination. I did this one with Cortland apples which are now in season in New England. These are related to Macintosh but slightly firmer and cook more reliably.

Ingredients
Pastry:
300g butter
150g icing sugar
2 eggs
200g spelt or whole wheat flour
400g plain/all-purpose flour

Filling:
about 6 apples
150g light brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
a dash of nutmeg
zest of 1/2 lemon

Method
Make pastry by combining butter, icing sugar and eggs in a food processor, pulsing until mixed and then adding flour a cup or so at a time, pulsing further to combine (I made this without a processor recently, creaming butter and sugar by hand, whisking in eggs and then adding flour by hand). Roll the dough out with your hands into a rough circle on a piece of baking parchment, until 30cm/12" across. Refrigerate as you heat oven and prepare filling

Preheat oven to 200C/400F.

Slice apples - peel them only in you think it's necessary because of tougher skin - and combine in a bowl with sugar, spices and zest.

When the oven is hot, roll the pastry out until the disk is more like 18" across - it should be 1cm (1/2") thick. Pile the fruit filling into the center, leaving a good margin, and then carefully push sections of the dough to create the sides as shown. Brush the dough with juices remaining from the fruit bowl, and sprinkle with some more light brown sugar if desired. Bake about 40 minutes -check it doesn't brown too quickly. Let sit for 5 minutes before serving if you can. Serve with custard or ice-cream ad lib.