• Place all the ingredients in a bowl and knead to form a firm dough. If the dough is still a little crumbly, knead it further by hand. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour.
• Since you will be using this dough primarily as a pie crust, I am describing this method. I will come back to other uses later.
• On a floured work surface, roll out the dough to about 5mm (0.2 inch) thick. Line your baking pan with the dough and trim the excess edges.

Baking time

• Baking time and oven temperature vary from recipe to recipe. Sometimes you bake the base blind to fill later, sometimes you bake the filling at the same time, and then there are the different cake sizes. So use this recipe as a base for all kinds of cakes and follow the recipe for time and temperature.
• To give you a little guideline, when I blind bake this base in a 25 cm (10") pan, it is in the oven for 30 minutes at 180˚C (350˚F) in a conventional oven. 20 minutes with the filling and 10 minutes without. Small cakes of about 10 cm (4") will bake for 15 minutes with the filling at 180˚C (350˚F) and 5 minutes without.