You can make a variety of products from shortcrust pastry - cakes for cakes and pastries, cookies, tortillas and pies. It is prepared on the basis of butter or margarine without the use of baking powder. Creamy, custard or sour cream creams, jam or jams are used as the filling. Shortcrust pastry products are not saturated with syrups - they must maintain a contrast between the dry texture of the crust and the moist filling.
It is necessary
- - 2 cups of flour;
- - 0.5 cups of sugar;
- - 200 g butter or margarine;
- - 2 small eggs.
Instructions
Step 1
When calculating products for kneading dough, focus on the amount of flour. For large cakes, you need 2 cups of flour, for 500 g of cookies without filling - 1.5 cups. Use a high quality butter margarine or butter for baking. If you decide to use unsalted butter, add some salt to the dough. Use only high quality flour, the finest grind. Be sure to sift it before kneading - the texture of the dough will be more uniform.
Step 2
Do not skimp on butter - if you reduce the amount, the dough will turn out to be dry, and the products made from it will be tough. To make the dough even more crumbly, cook it only on the yolks. For products with filling or cream, the dough is not flavored. If you plan on baking shortbread cookies, you can add vanilla, lemon zest, cinnamon, or grated nutmeg to the dough.
Step 3
Put butter, sugar and eggs in a deep bowl and use a wooden spatula to mix until smooth. Then add flour into it and knead the plastic, not cool dough with your hands. Collect it in a ball, wrap it in plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator for half an hour.
Step 4
Do not refrigerate the dough too much - once it freezes, it will begin to crumble. After taking the dough out of the refrigerator, knead it with your hands for a couple of minutes, and then divide into pieces and roll each on a board sprinkled with flour.
Step 5
The dough rolled out into a layer can be placed on a baking sheet and baked - this is how cake cakes are made. If you want to bake shortbread cookies, use molds to cut figurines out of the dough. Please note that too thick pieces of dough will not bake, and excessively thin pieces will burn - roll it into a layer 4-8 mm thick.
Step 6
Bake shortcrust pastry cakes on a dry baking sheet without grease. The dough is fat in itself, so the shortbread cakes and cookies will not burn. Use a fork to prick the food before baking. Place the baking sheet in a well-heated oven - the optimum temperature for baking is 200-250 ° C. Properly baked products have an even golden hue. When removing them from the baking sheet, be careful - the cakes break easily.
