Make the flaky shortcrust pastry

1. Add butter + salt into the flour and rub everything together until you get a coarse breadcrumb-like texture (you can either do this with a stand mixer or by hand)
2. Add the egg yolk and water and gradually combine it with the rest of the dough until it starts to come together, and shape it into a smooth dough ball
3. Transfer the dough onto a work surface, using the palms of your hands gently press down the dough this will help flatten the butter and gives the dough a more flaky finish.
4. Gather your dough back into a ball, wrap it with cling film and flatten it into a disk. Proceed by refrigerating it for at least an hour.

Rolling out and blind baking the crust (this is where you start if you’re using store-bought pastry)

1. Preheat the oven to 180*C at this point
2. Flour your work surface, start rolling out your dough until you get a large surface of about 2 to 3 mm of thickness
3. Using the pan as a reference, cut a large dough disk with a radius of about 4-5 cm wider than the pan itself, this will form the walls of the tart
4. Using the rolling pin, transfer the dough on top of the pan
5. Pleat the sides of the dough disk and let it gently slide into the pan.
6. Dock the dough by poking some holes in the base using a fork. Doing this will prevent the crust from puffing up during the process.
7. Line the dough pan with some baking paper, you can use aluminum foil for this process as well.
8. Fill the pan with some weights to stop the crust from bubbling up and shrinking during blind baking. I didn’t have any so I used some uncooked rice grains instead.
9. Bake the crust for 15 minutes at 180 degrees C
10. After the 15 minutes, take the crust out of the oven and remove the weights.
11. Prepare some egg wash by mixing together an egg yolk and a tablespoon of milk. Apply the egg wash onto the crust
12. Return the crust to the oven to bake for a further 5 to 10 minutes until it gets a nice golden colour

Prepare the cream cheese filling for baking

1. Mix cream cheese, mascarpone, sugar, milk and corn starch until it’s smooth and there are no more lumps. You should end up with a smooth and glossy mixture
2. If you want your filling to be even more gooey and liquid, add a bit more milk than I did at this point
3. Fill the crust with you cream cheese filling
4. Use any remaining egg wash on the crust to make sure that you get a nice shine in the end.
5. For ‘Medium’ finish, bake the tart for 15 minutes at 180 degrees C. However if you like the ‘Rare’ consistency, consider taking the cheese tart out about 5 minutes earlier. (I have some examples of this gooey lava – like consistency on my Instagram page if you’d like to have a look)

Make the apricot glaze and finish the tart

1. In a pan, add some apricot jam and some water then bring it to a boil whilst continually mixing. Let the mixture reduce until you get a smooth and jelly-like mixture.
2. Once the glaze is ready, I like to pass it through a strainer to make sure that it comes out smooth without any clumps.
3. Glaze the surface of the tart and plate everything up!