Today I’m sharing the official recipe of my peanut shortcrust pastry, an oil-based pastry that was created by chance (while making the peanut crumble) and then became one of my household’s basic recipes.

The day I made the crumble, since it was a spur-of-the-moment and not very planned recipe, I ended up with a rather large dough, so after making the crumble I had leftover dough with which I made additional cookies (which my kids loved! 🙂). Then, a comment from a reader (thank you again) made me realize it could be helpful to better define the quantities of ingredients to make just the tart, without extra cookies.

And so, after various trials, I reached what has become the standard recipe of “my”, much-requested-by-my-kids, peanut shortcrust pastry.
To be honest, all the intermediate trials were successful, even though I made small changes to the quantities of ingredients each time, so don’t worry: if you happen to use a bit more or less peanuts, or if you want to increase or decrease the sugar a bit… go ahead, you’ll still get an excellent peanut shortcrust pastry!

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Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Economical
Preparation time: 10 Minutes
Portions: 1 dough ball
Cooking methods: No cooking
Cuisine: Italian

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup peanuts (chopped)
1/4 cup vegetable oil (I usually use corn or sunflower oil)
1 teaspoon baking powder

Tools

Bowl
Knife

Steps

Shell, peel, and chop the peanuts.
👉 To clarify: peanuts with shell, so you need to shell them. Be sure not to use shelled and salted ones that are usually used for snacks.
👉 The peanuts can be chopped with a knife or using a food processor. In the latter case, pulse briefly to keep the texture coarse.
Pour the flour and baking powder into a large bowl, make a well in the center, and add the sugar, oil, and whole egg.
Mix the ingredients roughly with your hands, then add the chopped peanuts and continue kneading until you get a dough ball.
👉 At first, the dough may crumble, but by continuing to knead it will come together. If necessary, you can add a little cold water (sometimes, it can happen with all shortcrust pastries, the dough might crumble, but don’t worry, just a little cold water will fix it).
Let the dough ball rest in the fridge for about half an hour.
Afterward, the peanut shortcrust pastry is ready for making cookies, tarts, or crumbles.
This peanut shortcrust is an oil-based pastry that is just as good as the classic butter one, trust me!
And anyway, if you want to stick to the classic shortcrust recipe, just use the classic shortcrust recipe (this one) and simply add the chopped peanuts. 😉
Here are my peanut cookies, take one! 😀