*~Riceballz~*

Mum and occasionally dad loves to eat pastry, and every now and then we would make a batch of homemade tartlets for tea or snack. We tried a lot of recipes for the crust, and last holiday I was trying this recipe taken from joyofbaking.com. I must say that the sweet pastry crust recipe is very nice. Crispy and buttery, the crust is good for any pie or tart fillings.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups (210 grams) all purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 cup (50 grams) granulated white sugar
1 large egg, lightly beaten

Method:

1. In a separate bowl, sift or whisk together the flour and salt. Set aside.
2. Place the butter in mixer and beat until softened. Add sugar and beat until light and fluffy.
3. Gradually add the beaten egg, beating just until incorporated.
4. Don’t over mix or the butter will separate and lighten in color.
5. Add flour mixture all at once and mix just until it forms a ball. Don’t overwork or pastry will be hard when baked.
6. Flatten dough into disk, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for about 30 minutes or until firm.
7. The resulting mixture is quite soft and breaks easily, so do handle with care. I have to dust some flour to prevent the dough mixture from sticking to the rolling pin.
8. When the pastry is rolled to the desired size, lightly roll pastry around your rolling pin, dusting off any excess flour as you roll.
9. Unroll onto top of tart pan. Gently lay in pan and with a small floured piece of pastry, lightly press pastry into bottom and up sides of pan. With a thumb up movement, again press dough into pan.
10. Prick bottom of dough (this will prevent the dough from puffing up as it bakes).
11. Cover and refrigerate for about 20 minutes to chill the butter and to rest the gluten in the flour.
12. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (205 degrees C) and place rack in center of oven.
13. Do remember to fill tart pan with pie weights, rice or beans, making sure the weights are to the top of the pan and evenly distributed over the entire surface.
14. Bake the crust for 20 to 25 minutes or until the crust is dry and lightly golden brown.
15. Remove weights and cool crust on wire rack before filling.

This is my tartlets, filled in the tartlet pans ready to be baked. Some are quite smooth but some are not that pretty, thanks to my half baked skills. It does seem like there are a lot of steps, but it isn’t as hard as it sounds. All I have to do now is to bake the crust and let it cool off before filling them in. This batch of crust is for lemon curd tartlets, which I will blog about later.

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