I finally put my head down and made it. I’ve been thinking on how many vegans would miss out on some basic pastries and decided to try making the basic short crust pastry for last night’s vegetarian quiche.

An easy recipe to follow, can be slightly tricky for the first time. Why? It all depends on the contents of the vegetable shortening that you use. The shortening I used, locally available and likely in the Asian supermarkets called ‘Panyu’ is normally used in the making of Mooncakes.

This particular shortening or ‘Panyu’ contains Palm oil, Soya Lecithin, Vitamin E & E306 (mixed tocopherols). This is interesting when you do a search on what E306 is and I am not sure why it is added as an antioxidant in this particular vegetable shortening.

I did find that I needed to add more water to this recipe than I normally would have if I had used the Crisco shortening.

Next on the to-make list, a fully vegan quiche!

Ingredients: makes 1 9″ pie pastry

2 cups plain (all-purpose) flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

113g (1 stick) vegetable shortening

water

Method:

• Mix flour, baking soda & salt in a mixing bowl. Ensure that the baking soda is broken up and not lumpy. A good way to make sure – sieve!
• Add the vegetable shortening and mix with your fingertips (Remember? our fingertips are the coldest part of the body). The mixture should come together lumpy but not sticking together.
• Add a tablespoon of cold water at a time to the dough until it comes together into a smooth, malleable (or easy to handle without breaking apart) dough.
• You can use it immediately or chill in the fridge till you are ready to use it.
• Same as the regular short crust pastry, prick plenty of holes in the bottom & sides of the pastry after rolling out to shape for the cold bake.
• Cold bake is baking without any weights on the pastry. Temperature will be 180ºC (350ºF) for 10 minutes.