This recipe was designed specifically to be made with Bakers' Magic gluten free flour. The finished baked product will not be the same if you use another gluten free flour and you will need to adjust the recipe, particularly if the flour you're using contains rice flour.

 Ingredients

250 g Bakers' Magic Gluten free flour

65 g Brown sugar

1/4 tsp Cinnamon

1/8 tsp Ground cloves

~1/8 tsp Salt

190 g Butter (melted)

1 Egg

25 g Hot water

Butter - To substitute another fat into this recipe decrease the amount of fat/oil to ~160 g and increase the amount of water to ~50 g. The actual amounts will vary depending on what is being added.

Egg - One of the reasons the egg is in the recipe is that it helps as an emulsifier. 

Method

Mix together the Bakers' Magic Gluten free flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves & salt.

In another container melt the butter. Add the water & egg to the melted butter. Whisk with a fork to combine. Don't let this mixture cool.

Pour the melted butter mix over the combined dry ingredients & stir to combine. It can be mixed by hand, fork or wooden spoon. Mechanical devices can over mix the dough very easily, it is best done by hand.

At this stage the dough will feel slightly greasy. Wrap the dough in plastic clingwrap or put it in a plastic bag & store in the fridge for approximately 1 hour. The dough can be frozen at this stage.    

Cooling the dough is important - after cooling the butter is fully absorbed, flexibility is increased & the dough is easier to handle.

Bring the dough out of the fridge, it will be quite hard.

Prepare a clean work surface (silicon mat, baking paper) & knead the pastry until it is soft enough to roll out. As there is quite a lot of butter in the dough it will be quite soft - that is okay. 

Place dough in between two sheets of baking paper & roll out the pastry to a thickness of 3 mm. The pastry shrinks during baking as such when rolling out thinner is better than thicker. 

To ensure the dough is an even thickness follow this tip. Find 2 placemats (dinner setting - my placemats are ~4 mm thick) or two pieces of cardboard (2-3 mm thick) place one on either side of the dough. I have stainless steel spacers 1 mm, 2 mm & 3 mm thick - they are much easier to clean. When rolling out the dough ensure the rolling pin is wide enough to span the dough and part of the top of the placemats/spacers. My rolling pin is large – 61 cm from handle to handle. If your rolling pin is smaller it may be easy to half the dough. Initially when rolling the pin may not necessarily rest on the placemats/spacers, however, when the dough is the same thickness as the placemats/spacers it will. At this stage the dough should be all the same thickness.

After the dough is rolled out it may need to go in the fridge on a tray for ~5 mins (Most of the time I've a coldish kitchen & don't need to do this). It will really depend on how warm your kitchen is. Basically we want the dough to be pliable so that you can put it easily into a flan dish or the wells of a round bottom tart pan but not too soft that it loses its shape. I would cut out a piece of dough to see how easy it is to manipulate - I either peel the dough off the baking paper (large shapes) or use a knife to gently lift up one corner of small shapes. 

Grease the base of a flan dish or the wells of tart/pie pan or line a baking tray with baking paper - it will depend on what you are making. If you don't have a non-stick flat bottom pan cut some strips of baking paper to lay in a criss - cross pattern on the bottom of each well. The dough is put in on the top of the paper & then the edges of the paper are used to lift out the cooked pastry cases. 

Turn oven on to 170 C fan forced.   

Gently lift off the top piece of baking paper, put it back down on the dough. Holding on to both sheets of baking paper on both sides of the dough gently flip the dough over. Lift off the top piece of baking paper - do not discard.

If lining a large flan dish roll the dough up using your rolling pin & gently drape the dough over the dish. Gently push the dough into place. 

If making shapes or making little tarts use cookie cutters to cut out the dough. Transfer cut out dough to pan or baking tray. When you have cut out as many shapes as possible bring the dough together and roll it out again between the two sheets of baking paper. Continue cutting out shapes in the newly rolled dough. If the dough is cold enough the shapes will still be easy to pick up & transfer to the pan or baking tray. If not put the dough back into the fridge for ~ 5 mins. Repeat until you can't cut out any more shapes.

Transfer flan dish or baking tray with cut out shapes or filled tart/pie pan(s) to the fridge for ~10 - 15 mins. Bring out & using a fork prick the base of the flan case numerous times or the bases of the tart cases 3 x. 

Bake for ~15 mins before adding filling (if the filling needs to be baked)

or 

Bake for ~20 - 25 mins if adding a cold filling.