African food, traditionally, makes no provision for desserts but the food of Africa, especially today, is a glorious combination of traditional European, South Africa and Middle Eastern food prepared the African way. It seems unusual to use grains of paradise in an apple pie but African food is unusual and this spice isn’t limited only to savoury food, anyway. Grains of paradise don’t taste like black pepper, they’re quite different and here, used in apple pie, they’re actually quite delicious. Use bought  short pastry but just in case you have none, we included an easy one worth making and certainly worth keeping.

Ingredients

Pastry:

• 150 g ice cold hard butter
• 260 g plain flour
• ½ tsp salt
• 6 tsp ice cold water

Filling

• 3 large Granny Smith apples, peeled, chopped, cooked (you could bake or stew them) and cooled down
• 1 tsp grains of paradise, ground
• 2 tbsp sugar
• Caster sugar, to sprinkle

Method

• Preheat the oven to 200C.
• Sieve the flour and salt into a bowl and rub in the butter with your finger tips until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs.
• Add the ice cold water to the flour mixture and then, using a knife, mix the water and the flour to form a firm dough with an even colour and a suitable texture for rolling.
• Divide the pastry into 2 – take one half and roll it out so that it covers a 20cm plate,  trim the edges with a knife using the edge of the plate as your guide.
• Cover the pastry with the stewed apples mixture and sprinkle with sugar to taste.
• Roll out the other half of the pastry and then moisten the edge of the bottom layer of pastry and put the second piece on top.
• Press down on the pastry edges, making sure that they are properly sealed and cut off any excess pastry with a knife. in
• Flute the edges using your fingers and thumb, prick the surface of the pastry lightly and then put the pie in the oven, bake for 20-30 minutes.
• The pie is baked when it moves slightly on the plate if you shake the plate lightly.
• Dust with caster sugar and serve.