Good morning friends! Today I have a new basic recipe for you, a whole grain rice flour shortcrust pastry (so it’s a gluten-free pastry) with whole cane sugar muscovado. A bit of a long title 😅 for a recipe that is actually very simple. Just as simple as all the pastries, which together are my favorite basic sweet recipes. Because with pastries you never go wrong.

Until now, I had always used rice flour mixed with other flours, but this time I wanted to try using it in its pure form.

I had in mind the memory of certain deliciously crumbly cookies that my mom made some years ago, which she said she had copied from one of her cookbooks, and so I decided to replicate them.

We eagerly looked through all her books to find the recipe, but unfortunately, we couldn’t find it. I even looked through a dozen of my books, but oh, not a single one turned up! I have books and books of cooking but not a single recipe for cookies or rice flour shortcrust pastry! Sometimes I wonder if the memories I have really happened! Haha help!! 🤯😄

Well, in short, I got stubborn and tried anyway. In the end, as I’ve done in the past (that unforgettable time with the avocado pastry I’ll never forget), if you use the classic recipe as a starting point, which is the mother of all pastries, you can’t go wrong, don’t you think?

Then, since I was at it, I tried using whole cane sugar muscovado. I bought a fair trade bag some time ago, which I must admit, I don’t habitually use even though I like it a lot, because it’s very dark and gives off a covering intense color, as you can see from the photos. But this time the final color of the shortcrust pastry didn’t seem to me, in fact, a reason to desist. And then this sugar has an aromatic aftertaste that I thought would pair well with the rice flour, and flavor it without needing to add anything else, so this time I didn’t use lemon zest or vanilla.

PS: After everything was said and done (and cookies eaten), I got the idea that orange zest would be the right additional aroma, so I’ll try it out soon and from now I invite you to a future update! 😃💪

And here are other pastries I had prepared – with a “let’s try it anyway!” spirit – starting from the my classic pastry:

whole grain rice flour and muscovado shortcrust pastry

Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Economical
Rest time: 30 Minutes
Preparation time: 10 Minutes
Portions: 1 dough block
Cuisine: Italian
Seasonality: All seasons

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups whole grain rice flour
1/3 cup whole cane sugar (muscovado)
5 tbsp butter
1 egg (large)
1/2 tsp baking powder

Tools

Bowl glass

Steps

Pour the whole grain rice flour into a bowl.
Add the half teaspoon of baking powder, muscovado sugar, egg, and butter cut into pieces.
Work with fingertips until the sugar is dissolved and the butter well mashed (turned into a sticky cream). Gradually incorporate the flour.
At first, the mixture is very crumbly.
☝ If you think it’s necessary, you can add a tablespoon of milk or water. I didn’t need to, probably because I used a large egg instead of the medium one I usually use, a small difference that has its reason in baking.
Once you have the dough block, place it in the fridge for the classic half-hour.
👉 The rest in the fridge – and this goes for all pastries, especially those with butter – is useful because it cools and solidifies the butter that had softened with the handwork, making the dough more manageable. If you’re in a hurry to proceed with the recipe, nothing happens if you shorten the fridge time, or if you skip it entirely. In this second case, it’s better to work the dough very quickly so that the butter stays as cold as possible.
Tip: A useful trick is to cut the dough block into two or more pieces: placed in the fridge in pieces, it cools faster, also I recommend not to take the whole dough block out of the fridge but to take only a piece with which to start preparing the recipe (for example, the first cookies or the tart base) while leaving the other pieces in the fridge. 😉
I’ll see you tomorrow with the first of the recipes I made with this whole grain rice flour shortcrust pastry with whole cane sugar muscovado.
See you tomorrow! 🤗