What's Cooking Today??

I use half butter and whatever white vegetable fat I can get for my shortcrust, and half-and-half plain and SR flour. The first time I did that was when I didn't have enough plain, and it worked very well so I always do it now. I would prefer to use half lard half butter but we have a few vegetarians in the family (I use vegetarian "suet" in the mincemeat). I don't like the taste of margarine in baking although I will use it for convenience in strongly-flavoured things like chocolate or ginger cakes.

I will make pastry this afternoon and stick it in the fridge until I'm ready to make mince pies, currant tarts (currants, brown sugar, butter and egg) and lemon curd tarts for OH who doesn't like dried fruit. I will also make a batch of gluten-free shortcrust and freeze it because the friends who I'm visiting the first weekend in January have requested (well strongly hinted really!) that they'd like me to bring some of my GF mince pies.