Oh I do love my sweet pastry. This recipe has the perfect crispness and isn't too sweet for lovely rich fillings. Pictures above is a Chocolate Praline Tart which I have featured previously. It uses this delicious pastry. Todays post concentrates just on the pastry as I have a few tips to pass on.

Sweet Pastry

Ingredients:

500gm flour

250gm butter

130gm icing sugar

iced water

Use a food processor to pulse the flour, butter and icing sugar. Hands are too warm, body temperature melts the butter making the pastry tough and not crisp. Pulse until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. With the food processor running add the water slowly 10mls at a time until the mix just balls together.  Stop immediately. Remove pastry and wrap in glad wrap. Wrap in a flat rectangular package, refrigerate for 20mins.

Preheat oven to 160 degrees.

Spray the tins with oil.

Line the bench with glad wrap . Place pastry on the wrap and cover with another sheet of wrap. Use a rolling pin to flatten the pastry between the two sheets of wrap. No additional flour is needed this keeps the ingredients in the correct proportions to produce a crisp pastry.

Roll the pastry between the wrap to a 3-5mm thickness. Cut individual circles for small tins. Unpeel the top peice of glad wrap. The pastry can easily be removed from the bottom sheet of wrap by slightly lifting the peice of wrap of the bench.

Place pastry into prepared tins, being careful not to stretch the pastry or it may shrink. Prick the base of the pastry with a fork.

For ease use tins which have a removable base.  Bake blind for 20 mins. Remove baking beads and bake for a further 5 minutes or until the base is fully cooked. If pastry is already golden prior to this step reduce the oven temp to 150 degrees to prevent further colouring.

Cool shell.

Recipe will make two large tarts. If you only need one tart. Store the remaining pastry uncooked. Wrap remaining pastry in glad wrap and freeze indefinitely. Below is a little teaser for tomorrows recipe which uses this beautiful sweet pastry. So why not make the pastry today and have it in the fridge ready to prepare this "Caramel Cream Tart"