Keeping it real with shortcrust pastry tartlets

They say Mum’s know best, and when it comes to GF shortcrust pastry that is definitely true. Mum surprised me one day with the most gorgeous home made quiche, she said the pastry had been a “doddle”, “no probs” so I pinched it!

After my last pastry catastrophe, I thought it be best to follow a practised gluten free recipe.

So the pastry consisted of:

115g rice flour

55g potato flour

85g fine cornmeal (polenta)

1 heaped teaspoon of arrow root

pinch of salt

140g butter

1 beaten egg with 2tbsp of water

2tbsp caster sugar (for sweet pastry)

I followed the instructions to the letter and it turned out great! It said to roll out to 3mm thick, which I did but regretted, this made it very fragile and it constantly wanted to crack. I had some spare pastry and for this I rolled out thicker, this worked out better (these are the flatter edged pastries)

I’ve not used baking beans before so wasn’t sure how to use them! They made organic, shall we say, shaped bottoms to the pastries and because these weren’t getting baked again, I took them out half way through baking as, to me, it looked like the pastry was still raw, and I really didn’t want soggy bottoms!

I filled up the little pastry cases with custard, apricot halves, mandarin segments, apricot jam and a sprinkling of toasted flaked almonds. They were delicious! The pastry crumbly with a wonderful flavour and the filling a fab balance of custard and fruit, light and refreshing!