I like Mary Berry’s recipe for sweet shortcrust pastry. Rather than going half fat to flour, she replaces some of the flour with icing sugar. As well as making it sweet, it ups the fat to flour ratio and gives a rich pastry that seems to baste itself and doesn’t seem to stick (the one I made the other day was 175g flour, 25g icing sugar, 100g cold unsalted butter, a pinch of salt, the zest of an orange and an egg yolk and a couple of splashes of water to bind it).

Today I wanted a crust for a small chicken pie so I experimented with half fat to flour and then adding half the fat again in the form of vegetable suet. I went for 100g self raising flour, 50g butter, 25g suet and a pinch of salt, bound together with one egg (white and yolk). What was the result? Very tasty – not too fatty or soft but an excellent topping for a savoury pie… as well as a useful way to work through a bit more of the suet which has been in the fridge for quite a while and probably needs finishing off soon!