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Smoking Chimney

Recipes from a working kitchen · Cape Town

Pate Sucree- Sweet Flan Pastry

By Marna Ross Updated 12 August 2026 3.75 from 8 ratings French
Pate Sucre- sweet flan pastry is a very ‘chef-like’ pastry to work with. See it as an upper class version of the older, but more familiar’ tennis biscuit and butter base’ for tarts. If you attend fancy birthday party, wedding, stalk party, kitchen tea or high tea party, you will find the chefs of the kitchen use this pastry for their individually shaped perfect tart-lets. Pate Sucre- Sweet flan pastry know in English (Pate Sucre in French) is a wonderful pastry. You can make it in advance, keep it in the fridge, freeze it, and use at a later stage. It will take of course more time to use as it needs to blind-baked, but the end result are perfect. I use this pate Sucre -sweet flan pastry in my Milk Tart recipe as a base to make lovely individual ones, but it can be used in a larger flan tin/loose bottom tin as well if you want 1 large tart. This is a trusted recipe from my chef school days, and I can assure you, this is a recipe to keep forever in you food file. It's easy to make, for a TIP, use REAL butter. It is used for sweet flans, fruit tart-lets with crème pâtissière (I will cover this recipe at a later stage) and fruit mince pies. It is a rich and lovely pastry. I use this pastry as well in my Chocolate Tart. Another sweet bake you can easily get addicted to! I used this recipe countless times, never to be disappointed ever. If you have never worked with this recipe before, try it out by giving it a go. If you don't like it, simply just move on. In my career I have gained that you must do what is best with you. If you are ever in a rush, it helps save you time by working with things that you are familiar with.
A perfectly baked, crisp and sweet pate sucre pastry tart shell base.
Prep 15 min
Cook 15 min
Total 30 min
Serves 1

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Ingredients

  • 140 g flour
  • 80 g butter at room temperature
  • 2 eggs
  • 55 g caster sugar
  • 2 ml vanilla essence
  • 1 pinch of salt

Method

Pastry

  1. the flour and salt onto a marble slab or a clean work surface. Make a well in the centre

  2. Place the butter, egg yolks, vanilla essence and sugar in the well

  3. With the fingers, work the ingredients together, drawing in the flour to form a soft, but stiff smooth dough. (This is the old fashioned way - for a more modern way, combine in you Ken-wood machine and off you go!)

  4. Wrap the dough in clingfilm and allow to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes to 1 hour

  5. Line out a greased flan tin and bake blind

Blind Baking

  1. The shell is first lined with grease proof paper, then filled with baking beans to weigh down the pastry

  2. Bake it for 10-15 minutes at 180°Celsius

  3. The pastry shell may be fully baked if the filling itself does not need to be baked as well (a filling that sets)

  4. For fillings that needs no further baking, only blind bake the pastry shell for the 10-15 minutes as described, before adding the filling to be baked further

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