help help help!!! I am hopeless at pastry!

[lucysmam]

Give me your recipe and tried & tested method!

I cannot, for the life of me, work out how on earth my MIL achieves perfect pastry with

2oz marg
2oz lard
4oz flour

& mix it with a hand whisk!! I just end up with little lumps like breadcrumbs or biccy dough before it turns into biccy dough!

tia

I am fine thankyou lucysmam - just been having a go on wii fit and guitar hero with the DS's!

Hope you have a lovely 2009. x

P.S. I love cooking and baking, so am always on the look out!

Well if you would like to you can come here & make my lo a 2nd birthday cake in that case!! I am dreading having to present my efforts to the world after MIL made Thomas the Tank last year & he was fab!

Bet the kids kick ass on guitar hero, I aint co-ordinated enough for something like that! My oh would probably love one though (except we'd never get rid of his bro if we had one)

Have a very happy new year yourself xx

my sm always uses half cookeen and marge her pastry is always lovely. Plus you need really cold hands apparently

Learning to make pastry was the only new year's resolution I made and kept in 2008.

I've been using butter, flour and water.

Cold hands - definitely - mine are naturally rather warm and I've been running them under a cold tap which does seem to help

As little handling as possible - stop before you really think it's mixed properly.

Leave in fridge for a bit before rolling out.

It's working for me, anyway.