Shortcrust pastry

A little bit crumbly, but this short-crust pastry is amazing for sweet pies and no one would know it is gluten and dairy free!

I’ve been wanting to try some other pastry recipes recently – the Ugly Crust recipe has been a hands-down winner for so long, but I wanted to see if certain fillings were more tasty, more suited to a more shortcrust pastry base.  You know, the ones that you can buy already pre-made, back in the days when gluten wasn’t an issue!  I knew that this recipe worked with the fruit mince pies that I made a few months ago, and I thought I could give it a go with some other fillings … And here’s the results:

• worked really well with a banana caramel cream filling (see photo above), but was a bit thicker than I expected.  Simply bake the crust as per recipe below, chop up some bananas, add tinned caramel (which you can get quite easily in Australia), whipped cream and grate some dark chocolate over the top.  Yum!!
• worked ok-ish with pumpkin pie … wasn’t a great success but may have been due to not being able to get the crust out of the pie tin (didn’t have the proper baking paper down), and the pumpkin recipe needed a bit of work with additional spices etc.
• worked really well with pecan pie filling.  The filling soaked into the crust a little, making it not seem as thick as it really was.

Please feel free to try this one out and let me know what fillings work for you!

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Shortcrust pastry

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes

Servings 16

Ingredients

• 220 g rice flour
• 220 g cornmeal or polenta
• 140 g granulated sugar
• 220 g butter chilled and diced
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbs water

Instructions

1. Sieve together the rice flour and cornmeal.
2. Add the sugar and butter and mix through with your fingers until it looks like coarse breadcrumbs.
3. Mix the eggs and water together and then add to flour mixture.
4. Carefully mix through until all liquid is incorporated.
5. Knead on a floured surface until the dough is smooth, place in clingwrap and chill for 30 minutes.
6. Pre-heat oven to 190C.
7. Roll out the dough and place into prepared tins.
8. For just the crust, bake for approximately 15 mins or until a golden brown colour appears.
9. For filled pies, follow the instructions with the fillings.
10. Remove from oven and cool on wire rack until ready to be used.