Instructions: You can make this pastry by hand or in a food processor.

Cream together the butter sugar and salt and then rub or pulse in the flour and egg yolks.

When this mixture has come together looking like coarse breadcrumbs add the cold milk or water.

Pat and gently work together to form a ball of dough.

Lightly flour and push pat and squeeze into shape.

The idea is to get your ingredients to a dough form with the minimum amount of movement i.e. keeping your pastry flaky and short (the more you work it the more elastic it will get causing it to shrink in the oven and be chewy).

allowing to rest:
I normally roll the pastry into a really large short and fat sausageshape wrap it in clingfilm and place it in the fridge to rest for at least 1 hour.

lining the mould:
Carefully slice off thin slivers of your pastry (dont try to slice frozen pastry) lengthways around 5mm thick.

I like it around that thickness as its delicate but you can make it thicker if you want it just takes longer to cook. Place the slivers in and around the bottom and sides of your tart mould just fitting them together like a sort of jigsaw.

Then simply push the pieces together level out then tidy up the sides by pushing with your thumb and either cleaning off the excess pastry from the rim of the mould or allowing it to hang over the edge which is quite rough but I like it.

Once youve finished lining your tart mould you must again allow it to rest for at least an hour preferably in a freezer (I always store my pastry in the freezer because it keeps so well).

I always line two tart moulds and freeze one for another day (or you could make more if you want just double the recipe as it takes no extra time).

Its so easy to grab a tart out of the freezer bake it in minutes and fill it with something simple or elaborate and if guests turn up or you just want to make a nice dessert it makes pudding a piece of cake!

baking the tart:
To start with I always bake tart shells for around 15 minutes at 180C/350F/gas 4 which will cook the tart all the way through colouring it slightly.

Once completely cooled it can be filled with any of the uncooked fillings such as fruit filled mascarpone tarts and chocolate tart (qv fruit filled mascarpone tart qv chocolate tart ) which will hopefully provide a basis for you to make up and vary your own.

With baked fillings such as Almond Tart or Lemon and Lime Cream Tart youll have to bake the tart blind first which means cooking the shell at 180C/350F/gas 4 but only for about 12 minutes so that its only lightly coloured but just cooked through. Another way commonly used is to fill the tart shell with cling film or greaseproof paper and fill it with beans (you can use rice lentils peas whatever) the idea being that you pack the beans in so tightly that they will stop the sides of the pastry from dropping.

Cook for 10 minutes and then carefully remove the beans and cook for a further 5 to 10 minutes. Yes this is a bit of a performance and I only ever do it when Im having bad luck quite honestly if you take your tart shell straight out of the freezer and place it in a preheated oven you shouldnt have any problems.

After baking blind you add your filling and bake further until the filling is cooked (see recipes for cooking times).

As this is a book about what I cook and what I find easy at home Im not going to hide the pastry recipe in a small corner in the back of the book. I find it such a simple thing to make premake freeze and vary; it is such an asset to home cooking and so versatile.

If you would like to email yourself the recipe for later use, or share the recipe with your friends or family, enter the email addresses below and this recipe will be emailed to you and others as well.