Like most people’s mothers, my mum was a wonderful pastry maker, whether it was plain short-crust pastry, or an enriched pastry, or a sweet pastry, or a suet pastry for steak and kidney puddings, whatever type of pastry she made it was light and crisp and delicious. She could do it so quickly too, we would come home and she would be inspired to make some jam tarts and one, two, three, there were jam tarts!
I’m not too bad at making pastry, but I’m not as consistently good as she was… but I guess these days we don’t eat as much pastry so I don’t have as much practice. One type of pastry I would like to try is a hot-water crust, the sort you have for pork pies… perhaps I should have a go at making some!
I was looking at Eliza Acton’s cookery book and came across a recipe where instead of suing fat to make pastry she uses cream. She is not very specific with the recipe, for a pound of flour she suggests ½ – ¾ pint of rich cream, as she describes it, thick sweet cream. The cream is added gradually until a soft pastry is made; as you might imagine it should be handled as little as possible and ‘sent to the oven’ as soon as it is made. She suggests you might add 4 -6 ounces of butter… very rich indeed!
I don’t think I will try this recipe, it really does sound too rich for modern tastes!
Lois Elsden 