Shortcrust pastry is prepared quickly enough. It goes on the preparation of various pies and cookies. The most delicious shortcrust pastry items are baskets with toppings. According to this principle, the famous Laurent pie, quiche and many other goodies are made. Which dough to prefer - sweet or fresh, you decide. We will only tell you how the dishes are prepared and what are the advantages of each of them.
The beauty of a simple shortcrust pastry
A simple shortcrust pastry is suitable for both sweet dessert dishes and lunch meat, fish, vegetable and mushroom pies. It's all about the stuffing. And they can be very different. Delicious shortbread dough is obtained only from high quality products. It can be sweet - with eggs and sugar, and can be fresh - only from flour and butter or margarine. Both those and other recipes deserve to be mastered. In our article, we will teach you how to prepare baskets - the basics for sweet berry pies, and also tell you what the three-layer fillings are.
Basket
For its preparation you need chopped shortcrust pastry. The berry pie recipe does not require the addition of sugar or eggs. All the charm of baking from unleavened shortcrust pastry is in contrast between the fragile and unleavened shell and sugary-sweet filling. From this combination, dessert seems easier than in the case of sweet dough and toppings. Fragile shortcrust pastry (the recipe for a pie with berries will be slightly lower) can be easily removed from hard tins with corrugated edges, baked quickly, retains taste for a long time. You can bake several baskets on weekends, and on weekdays only make fillings, fill them with baskets and bake in the oven. A basket of unsweetened dough is a universal setting for all types of fillings. It perfectly shades the sweetness of cream or custard, jam and meringue in dessert design, and also eliminates the sharpness of canned vegetables or salted-peeled meat, fish, etc.
We master the preparation of the basis for a delicious treat
Unsweetened shortcrust pastry (recipe for a pie with berries) is made as follows. Take a 250-gram packet of margarine and wheat flour - about three glasses (how much will take). As for flour, ground from durum wheat for baking is always preferable, however, our dough should not wander, rise or roll into a transparent layer, so you can use ordinary premium flour. This is another advantage of the sand dough over the others.
Margarine must be removed in advance from the refrigerator to make it soft. Pour flour onto the table. In the middle, put margarine and chop it with a knife along with flour. When the mass acquires a certain semblance of uniformity, it must be assembled in a lump, wrapped in polyethylene and put in the refrigerator for half an hour. During this time, the dough is stabilized, then it can be rolled into a layer. Rolled dough, its thickness is 0.6-0.8 cm, with the help of a rolling pin it is transferred into a large shape, slightly pressed with your fingers, trimmed along the edge and pricked with a fork. All this can be seen in the photographs. In small forms, the dough is spread over the walls and bottom with fingers. It is important that holes do not form.
The form with the dough is put into the oven and baked until ready. If the fever is large, then eight minutes will be enough. The finished basket should not be removed immediately - it may break. This can be done after it cools down a bit.
Berry basket filling
We told how to cook a simple and unsweetened shortcrust pastry - a recipe for a pie with berries from any jam or from fresh seasonal fruits - apricots, mulberries, raspberries, cherries, etc. - those that are characterized by increased sugar content. At the bottom of the baked basket is placed a sweet custard, on it - berries from jam or fresh, on them - protein cream. This delicacy needs to be baked according to the technology of meringue preparation.
At the bottom of the finished baked and cooled basket, you can put a sweet creamy cream, on it - jam or mashed potatoes from pureed fresh berries. For berries - a scoop of ice cream or whipped cream. Such a cake is not baked, but, on the contrary, is additionally cooled in the refrigerator.
Sweet shortcrust pastry
Sweet dough is more suitable for cookies. It turns out friable and, from a large amount of oil, as if melting in the mouth.
To prepare, you need 100 g of softened margarine or butter mixed with the same amount of icing sugar, two egg yolks and one glass of flour (it must be sifted). Stir with a silicone or wood spatula. Shortbread dough does not like hands. Having turned it into a more or less uniform lump, wrap the whole mass in polyethylene and send it to the refrigerator for cooling and stabilization. After half an hour, it can be rolled out and cut into strips or, with the help of special molds, cut out the figures.
Without waiting for it to warm up, that is, in a cool form, put on a baking sheet, stick candied fruits or nuts and bake. In a hot oven, cookies will be ready in less than 15 minutes.