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How to make a good pastry tart case

Name: How to make a good pastry tart case
Prep time: 12 min
Total time: 42 min
Yield: 1 tart
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: 350 g sweetcrust pastry (pâte sablée)

Lining a tin or mould with pastry to make a tart or pie seems simple enough: you roll out the pastry, put it in the tin and trim off any overhanging bits.

It may not be rocket science, but if you want a tart with a perfect pastry case, it really helps to take care over a few details, which I will show you here.

92 K 3.1/5 (14 reviews)573561

Duration

45 min.

Difficulty

Easy

Last modified on: October 28^th 2026

Step by step recipe Ingredients Duration Nutritional facts Cost Comments Support the site ❤️

For 1 tart, you will need:

1 350 g sweetcrust pastry (pâte sablée)
Total weight: 350 grams

Times for this recipe

Preparation

15 min.

Resting

30 min.

All in all

45 min.

Preparation 15 min.

Resting 30 min.

When should you start or finish this recipe?

If you start now, at , you will finish around: ?.Change start time

To finish around 7pm, you'll need to have started before: .Change end time

Step by step recipe

Step 1 - ⌛ 5 min.

How to make a good pastry tart case : Step 1

Start by rolling out the pastry – 350 g sweetcrust pastry (pâte sablée) here – which should be really cold. You might find these tips helpful.

Roll the pastry out to the diameter of your tin + the height of the sides.

Step 2 - ⌛ 5 min.

How to make a good pastry tart case : Step 2

Sit the tin your mould on a sheet of cooking parchment laid on a baking sheet. Ease the rolled-out pastry down into the tin. Use your fingers to press the pastry gently into contact with the sides, leaving any excess pastry overhanging the edge..

Step 3 - ⌛ 30 min.

How to make a good pastry tart case : Step 3

It is most important to make sure that the pastry sit well into the corner where the base meets the sides (shown by the arrows on this diagram). There should not be any space left behind it.

Put the tin on its baking sheet into the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Step 4

After refrigerating, take the tin out of the fridge and sit it on the work top.

Step 5 - ⌛ 2 min.

How to make a good pastry tart case : Step 5

Use a knife to trim off any excess pastry...

Step 6

...all around the edge.

Step 7

Your pastry case is now ready to be filled.

Step 8

You can prick over the base if necessary (depending on the filling and pastry you are using).

Remarks

French pastry chefs have a whole arcane vocabulary of their own. There is no need for amateurs to know these terms and they often have no real equivalents in English, but if you'd like to broaden your chef's vocabulary, you can look them up on the following pages (just click on the little flag top right to see the original French version: the rolled-out pastry ("abaisse" in French), and the process of lining with pastry ("foncer" in French).

Source: Homemade.

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Nutritional information

	Proteins	Carbohydrates	Fats	Calories	Energy
Per 100 g	6 g RDI=9 %	46 g RDI=17 %	29 g RDI=40 %	471 kcal RDI=24 %	1,972 kJ RDI=24 %
Whole recipe	21 g RDI=32 %	161 g RDI=61 %	102 g RDI=139 %	1,649 kcal RDI=82 %	6,902 kJ RDI=82 %