Dear Rouxbe & Members,

I was trying to make some mini lemon meringues and some mini plain tarlettes using Pate Sucree and a Pate Brisee recipes respectively. These are basically shortcrust pastry recipes and the tartlette cases are the kind of thing served at a high tea, used of canapes etc.

When I say mini sized, I mean really small ... like 2 inches in diameter as per those mini muffin/cupcake tins.

I figured they'd be a cinch to make rather than buy, but boy how wrong I was. I tried 2 different methods and neither worked.

Method 1
I rolled out my pastry and cooled it. I then used a circular cutter to cut out 24 little circles and then gently eased the discs into a mini muffin tin. I then used a ball of scrap dough to press the pastry into the tin. covered with aluminium foil (instead of baking paper), cooled the tray and back into the fridge to cool for 15 mins. Once cool, I put baking ceramic beads into the little muffin holes and put into oven to bake. 15mins later, shrunk pastry and instead of pastry cases, I ended up with mini pastry discs with a little raised lip. Not what I was looking for.

Method 2
I turned my mini muffin tray upside down and instead put the pastry cases on the "humps" of the muffin tin (greased of course). Lined with foil and back to fridge to cool. Once cool, I placed a flat tray on top to weigh down the pastry and baked for 10 minutes.

This time, the Sweet shortcrust seemed to work (but not as perfect as i'd like) but the ordinary shortcrust pastry still shrunk.

I'm sure there must be a simpler way to make these little pastry cases or perhaps i'm doing something wrong .. eg: like using the wrong kind of dough or method or maybe just overworking the dough perhaps?

Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

The making of and handling of these two doughs will be covered in more detail down the road in the Cooking School. This is far too big of a subject to get into detail in the context of a forum. The main things to keep in mind when handling either of these doughs are that they need to be kept as cold as possible and they should not be overworked. Warm, overworked dough will shrink and also be greasy. It might be helpful to purchase the appropriate sized tart pans so you can properly press the dough into the shape you want it. This will ensure that you are not overworking the dough and/or warming it up. Pate sucree is much more forgiving than pate brisee and is a good dough to keep practicing with. Cheers!