Vegan Pâte Sucrée/Shortcrust Pastry
Crisp, sturdy, tender and slightly sweet vegan pâte sucrée for all your tart-making needs. Easy and quick to make by hand and perfectly versatile.
Ingredients
- 145 g cold vegan butter, I use this one
- ⅛ tsp salt
- 115 g powdered sugar
- 40 g almond powder, or 20g all-purpose flour
- 20 g cornstarch
- 45 g plant based milk
- 250 g all-purpose flour
Instructions
- *This recipe makes one 7 inch/18cm tart and about 5 tartlets. You can also make up to a 9 or 10 inch/23 or 25 cm tart with it.
- In a large bowl, work the cold (but not rock hard) butter with a metal or wooden spoon just until pliable. Add in the salt and almond powder and sift in the powdered sugar. Stir until smooth but don’t cream them, the goal isn’t to incorporate air.
- Stir in the cornstarch and milk, the mixture will split, that’s normal. Add in 100g of the flour to smooth it out.
- Add in the rest of the flour and mix just until a dough starts to form, then go in with your hands to finish incorporating it. Once you get a smooth dough, stop mixing. You don’t want to overwork it.
- Wrap the dough in cling film (or cling film alternative) and chill it in the fridge for at least one hour or up to a week. You could also freeze it for up to 2 months.
- Once you’re ready to work with it, preheat your oven to 180°C/350°F.
- Roll out the dough on a floured surface or between two pieces of parchment to about 4mm or a bit more than ⅛ inch thick and bigger than the diameter of your pie pan. If the dough starts to soften too much, pop it in the fridge for about 10 minutes before continuing. *You can also just grab pieces of dough and press them evenly into your pie dish/pan to form the tart shell if you don’t want to roll it out.
- Transfer the rolled out dough to your pie pan and press it in evenly, making sure it gets well into the corner.
- Place the whole thing in the fridge for about 20 minutes to solidify, then trim the top edge with a paring knife and dock the bottom with a fork.
- Bake for about 15 minutes to parbake (if your filling needs to be baked) or about 25 minutes to fully bake (if your filling doesn’t need baking). For parbaking, it should be lightly golden but still a bit pale, not baked all the way through. For baking it completely, it should be a darker golden brown.
- Let the tart shell cool a few minutes before removing it from the pan (if fully baked) and letting it cool completely on a wire rack. Then you can optionally use a microplane to smooth out the edges.
Notes
- *Disclaimer: I have a tiny not-so-great oven, so your bake time may vary from mine.
- I strongly suggest making recipes by weight, if you make them by cups I can’t guarantee that you’ll get the same results.
- You can optionally add 1 tsp vanilla extract or paste to the dough. Or even spices, zests or other extracts such as almond.