pâte sucrée (sweet shortcrust pastry)

I’ve recently come to a marvelous realization about gluten-free baking…

Pastry dough is now a piece of cake!

Eliminating the gluten from the baking means you don’t need to worry about over working the dough & making it tough. It means you don’t need to spend hours working the flour into the cold butter with your cold finger tips. It means you can melt the butter & pour it straight into the dough mix!

Not going to lie, it took me a while to connect the dots, but once I did I was thrilled!

You’d think my pastry would suffer too being gluten-free & all. Well let me just tell you, I had a professional try my tartlet shells & they were impressed!

Current scoreboard: Wheat-Eaters 0 :: Gluten-Free 1

I like winning. I like winning a lot.

Having come to this realization, I may need to start making pies again. Have I ever mentioned how much I love pie?

Tools/Equipment/Ingredients:

Electric Scale - Etekcity - http://amzn.to/2xkKpQk

Hand Mixer - Kenwood - http://amzn.to/2xkjowh

Silicone Spatula - Zyliss - http://amzn.to/2y3Srkw

Cupcake Tin - Wilton - http://amzn.to/2xkp4GG White Flour GF - Dove's Farm - http://amzn.to/2z1b5I1​

Ingredients: (makes 36 mini tartlet shells) – 330g gluten free white flour blend – 100g icing sugar – 0.25 tsp salt – 1 tsp xanthan gum – 1 tsp guar gum – 180g unsalted butter, melted – 2 large egg yolks – 2 tbs water

Directions: 1. combine the flour, sugar, xanthan & guar gum in a bowl & whisk to combine. Add in the butter, yolks & water & mix until everything has been evenly distributed. The dough will be very wet at this stage. 2. flatten the dough into a disc & wrap with cling film, refrigerate for 2 hours. During this time, the dough will absorb all the extra moisture it had before. 3. brush your tartlet tin with melted butter & place in the fridge for 10 minutes. 4. dust your work surface with flour & roll out your dough to 3mm thick. Cut discs that are a little bigger than the tin you are working with. The size of my tartlet tin called for 7.5cm. Line your tin with the pastry & place in the freezer for half an hour. 5. preheat your oven to 150C. Blind bake your shells for 25 minutes. If not golden by the end of the baking, remove the baking weights & continue to bake for 5 to 15 minutes until they reach a nice, light, golden colour. 6. remove from the oven & transfer to a wire cooling rack to cool. Once cool, shells can be filled with whatever filling you desire.

If you liked the recipe, go check out our KICKSTARTER project for an upcoming Gluten-Free Cookbook!

Tips: *** the dough itself can be frozen for up to a month. I usually make a batch or two & divide it out into smaller portions, that way I can take some out of the freezer the night before I need it & always have freshly baked tartlet shells on hand to fill with goodness. *** *** you don’t have to make tartlets with this dough, it can just as easily be rolled out to make a large tart, or a pie. ***

#shortcrust #pastry #sugar #flour