I use mürbeteig so often for pies, cookies, tarts etc that I figured I'd post my favorite variations. Each are better than the store bought variety but...
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I still want to define the quantities better so that when we make a pumpkin pie, we know how much dough we'll knead ;-)
The plain Jane variation:
INGREDIENTS:
500g flour
335g butter (don't let the butter get too warm)
145 sugar (half powder and half crystal)
20g vanilla sugar
1 egg yolk
1 egg
2 pinches of salt
INSTRUCTIONS:
using the beater blade, blend butter, eggs, egg yolk, all sugars & salt until smooth & creamy
then, add flour and use the dough arm to kneed until you don't see any more white flour.
you want to keep the dough cool. Kneed by hand a few times to ensure that no butter chunks are visible.
The refined recipe:
INGREDIENTS:
125g Sugar (half of it powder sugar)
250g butter
375g Flour
+ pinch of salt, 1 tsp dried vanilla bean, lemon, 1-2 egg yolks
INSTRUCTIONS:
using the beater blade, blend butter then add everything but the flour and beat again on slow setting
add the flour and knead using the kneader attachment but, not too long!
Then hand knead the dough for a few secs before wrapping it in cellophane and cooling in fridge for 30-90 mins.
It will be harder and require more kneading but will take form nicely if you kneed it in parts and then combine the parts.
Be sure to knead as little as possible to keep the dough cool.
Then, flour the table and roll it out.
then use cookie cutter and place the dough into forms without greasing the form.
If you plan to use this as is... for tartlets (for example)
- fork the bottoms to avoid blistering
- Bake at 190ºC with circulating air to set the crust and brown it (3-5 mins)
- cool, remove forms
- add your filling
- voilà