Cheesecake Pastry - Plain or Chocolate
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Cook time: 
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Serves: 9 inch base
 
Ingredients
  • 230 g All-purpose Flour (sub 40 g cocoa if making chocolate pastry)
  • 75 g Pure Icing Sugar
  • 130 g Salted Butter, cold and cubed
  • 50 g Free-range Egg Yolks (2 egg yolks + 10g of whole beaten egg)
  • ½ Tbsp Vanilla Extract
Instructions
  1. Place flour (and cocoa powder if making choc pastry) in a food processor. Cut the butter into a 1 cm dice and add to the food processor. Try to distribute the cubes of butter evenly in the flour so that they don’t stick together.
  2. Process on high speed until resembling even bread crumbs.
  3. Add icing sugar and process for about 10 seconds on high speed.
  4. Add the egg yolks and vanilla. Process on high speed for about 15 seconds. The pastry will not form a ball inside the processor.
  5. cheesecake pastry process
  6. Pour the crumbly mixture onto a work surface – do not add any extra liquid! Press all the crumbs together and press the pastry together till more or less smooth. This should take only about 3 minutes. Form the pastry into a ball and squash it flat to about 1cm thick - this helps it to chill faster.
  7. Wrap the pastry in cling wrap and refrigerate it for 15 minutes.
  8. Cut a 30 cm x 30 cm square of non-stick parchment paper. Place the chilled pastry on the paper and roll out with a lightly floured rolling pin to an EVEN 3mm thickness, roughly in a circular shape. The parchment paper makes it super easy to turn the pastry when rolling!
  9. Spray/butter the inside of your 9 inch (22,5 cm) tin. Place the loose bottom face side down onto the pastry. Cut around the sides of the tin’s bottom and also at 12, 3, 6 and 9 o’clock to divide the excess pastry into 4 strips.
  11. Remove the strips one by one and place to one side. Press down on the tin’s bottom so that the pastry squishes out slightly underneath. I find this little lip of pastry helps to combine the pastry on the sides with the pastry on the bottom.
  12. Flip the parchment paper and tin’s bottom. Peel away the paper.
  13. Drop your tin’s bottom back into your tin and fill in the sides of the tin with your pastry strips using your fingers. Do not worry about a smooth finish just yet.
  14. Preheat your oven to 180ᵒC/350ᵒF.
  15. Place your tin in the freezer for 5 minutes. Remove from freezer and smooth the edges and bottom with a metal spoon. Return to freezer for a further 10 minutes or until frozen solid.
  17. Cut a large piece of heavy weight foil (enough to line the bottom AND go up and over the sides.) Spray the dull side of the foil with non-stick cooking spray. Smooth the greased side of the foil directly onto the pastry. Leave no pastry exposed. Be sure to press the foil down very snugly into the corners of the cheesecake pastry. Run your finger over the top edge as well to maintain the shape of the pastry during baking.
  19. Fill the cavity with dry baking beans (I prefer rice).
  20. Bake one notch below the center of your oven for 35 minutes, turning after 15 minutes.
  21. Remove from the oven and leave to stand (with foil and rice still inside) for 10 minutes.
  22. Remove the foil and rice and proceed to fill with cheesecake filling. Bake again for as long as your cheesecake recipe states.
Recipe by Philosophy Of Yum Blog at https://philosophyofyum.com/cheesecake-pastry-recipe-plain-chocolate/