So, I did this wrong. I haven't made pastry for a while and it didn't seem like it was coming together very well and I just kept adding water and I overshot and made it much, much too wet and soft. Even after chilling for an hour or so, it was still extremely soft! I was still able to roll it out and use it. And it does seem to have baked up reasonably well. But I definitely wouldn't add quite so much water next time.

Sweet Shortcrust Pastry

From Edmonds Cookery Book

Ingredients

• 2 c. soft (cake/plain/standard) flour
• 150g butter¹
• 1/2 c. (caster) sugar²
• 2 large egg yolks³
• 2-4 Tbsp. cold water⁴

Directions

1. Sift flour into bowl.
2. Cut butter into flour until mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
3. Stir in sugar.
4. Add egg yolks.
5. Add water, 1 Tbsp. at a time, until mixture comes together. Err on the side of too crumbly/dry over too sticky/wet.
6. If pastry seems difficult to work with, wrap in cling film and chill for at least 15 minutes.
7. Roll out on floured surface. Shape, fill, and bake as desired.

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¹ Edmonds didn't specify that it should be unsalted butter, so I assume they're intending that salted butter be used. That said, I was all out of salted butter, so I ended up going with unsalted anyway. I could see a tiny bit of salt being nice as it might actually accentuate the sweetness. But I worry that using that much salted butter would make it too salty. I might try it with salted next time just to test it an see. ^Back
2 I just used regular granulated sugar here. The Edmonds recipe does call for caster sugar though, so I'd suggest using that if you have it. Technically I probably should've increased the volume of sugar slightly (or just done it by weight), but I thought the pastry tasted pretty sweet anyway, so I didn't worry about the couple grams of sugar I might've missed by using a coarser type. ^Back
3 I tossed in a third yolk because my eggs were a bit small. ^Back
4 Edmonds actually only calls for 1-2 Tbsp. of water, but there's no way that was going to be enough. I ended up putting 5 Tbsp. (plus an extra egg yolk) and yes, that was too much. But 1 Tbsp. was definitely way too dry. I think 4 Tbsp. (1/4 c.) would've been just about right. I'll try that the next time I'm making this recipe and see how it goes. ^Back