Is it possible to be incapable of making SC pastry?

[Yarboosucks]

I want to make really short, melt in the mouth pastry for DS (mince pies). My pastry is, um, hard.

Can anyone advise me on a guaranteed recipe / method that will enable me to look like a competent baker?

Like Gothic I use a "pat in the pan" recipe, no rolling, just tip all the breadcrumb texture loveliness into a rectangular oven dish (no mince pies here) and pat it into shape.

I make an apple slab pie, it has a pasty bottom, nothing up the sides and a crumble top.

I use a food processor to make both the pasty base and crumble top. My hands are way too hot to make pasty by hand, the butter just melts.

Recipe for it is here

The Delia Smith recipe is foolproof. I use all butter instead of lard.

I haven't actually made it for years though. In France I find the ready made pastry from Carrefour is excellent. I don't know what's available in the UK though - I had some from M&S once and it was vile.

Fat - 50:50 butter:lard - frozen then grated into the flour, before the chilled/iced liquid (orange juice in my mince pies ) is added. Leave it in the fridge for 20 mins before rolling.
(Use a Pastry Blender & you don’t need to worry about warm hands like this www.amazon.co.uk/KitchenCraft-Stainless-Steel-Pastry-Blender/dp/B0001IWUQ8?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Its weird but I when I was a teenager I could make shortcrust that would melt in your mouth. My mother and grandmother used to marvel at it. I don't know what the fuck I did, but I really mangled it around in a slapdash manner and it came out like miracle pastry. I lost my ability to do magic around the age of 25, despite not changing a thing.

I use the Dairy Book recipe, which is 2 parts flour to 1 part butter and 1.5tsp water per oz of flour. The breakthrough for me was to stop using butter straight from the fridge because it's so hard to rub in that I was over working it. So with soft butter I could rub the butter into the flour with my fingertips really quickly. I stir the water in with a thin knife as well.
I think everyone saying don't knead it is right. The more heavy handed you are, the tougher the pastry will be.

My pastry was always hard until I read somewhere that you should use as little water as possible. It's great now.

So - tomorrow will be my final attempt. I am reasonably successful in RL - cannot bear the idea of being beaten by effing pastry!

Half butter half lard, really cold ingredients, and a tbs of vodka that’s been in the freezer.