Roopa
I reference sweet pastry (or sweet paste) in a bunch of other posts, so I felt it deserved its own post! It’s a really versatile pastry that can be used in both sweet and savoury dishes, and works very well as a stable and delicious base for cheesecakes. I don’t have a great photo of it, but it looks pretty much like any other rolled dough.
SWEET PASTE (enough for 6 x 6″ cake rings)
INGREDIENTS
- 90 g granulated sugar
- 180 g cold butter
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 g vanilla extract
- 1 g lemon zest
- 270 cake flour
DIRECTIONS
- Knead together the granulated sugar and butter with a wooden spoon until the sugar has been worked in and there are no lumps. This should be done quickly so the butter stays cold
- Add the egg yolk and flavours until well mixed.
- Once the dough is smooth, sift the flour into it and knead with your hands until the flour is worked in. Be careful not to over do it!
- Refrigerate for a day to let the sugar dissolve in the dough.
- When you will be making cake, roll out the dough and use the cake rings to cut crusts.
Notes:
- Roll out the crusts to ~3mm on a well floured table.
- Don’t overwork the dough.
- You want to bake it slightly until there is slight colour around the edges (not more than 10 minutes).
- You need to “dock” the paste before baking. A docker is a weird looking tool that you use to put small indentations into the paste to prevent it from rising.
Chateau Gateau 