All the shortcrust cookies that I propose today are very simple. They are prepared with shortcrust pastry, also known as shortcrust pasta. A dough used to serve as a base for both sweet and savory cakes and tarts with a brittle texture after baking.
The dough is prepared with flour and butter as main ingredients. It is a dough with a high fat content; the proportion of butter can exceed 50% although this is not our case today. In addition to the two main ingredients, the dough contains eggs and sugar to make this dough a sweet dough.
The first time it can be a little "complicated" to prepare this dough because one always doubts which point to stop kneading. But today I will try to be descriptive enough so that you do not have problems. If it still doesn't work out the first time, don't give up!
The recipe
- 150 g. pastry flour
- 80 g. of very cold butter
- 50 g. icing sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 pinch of salt
- We put in a bowl the flour and the butter in cubes of approximately 2 cm.
- With the tips of our fingers we go pinching to blend both ingredients until a grainy texture is achieved, like that of breadcrumbs or a crushed cookie.
- Add the icing sugar, the salt and the egg and we mix the dough again in the same way until it is possible to gather the dough into a ball. The key is not to over knead, so that the butter does not get hot and melt.
- We cover the bowl with plastic wrap and Let it sit in the refrigerator for about 1 hour.
- After the hour, we remove from the refrigerator and place the dough on greaseproof paper. We sprinkle flour and we crush with our hands to then stretch it with the roller until the desired thickness is achieved.
- Once done, we cut the dough with a pasta cutter, gathering the excess dough to reuse it.
- We put the baking paper with the cookies on a baking tray and we bake at 180ºC heat up and down for 10 minutes or until edges start to brown.
- To finish we take out of the oven, and carefully we pass the shortcrust cookies to a rack to cool.