Sweet Tart Dough

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick plus 1 tablespoon (9 tablespoons) very cold (or frozen) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 large egg yolk

Directions:
Put the flour, confectioners’ sugar and salt in a food processor and pulse a couple of times to combine. Scatter the pieces of butter over the dry ingredients and pulse until the butter is coarsely cut it–you should have some pieces the size of oatmeal flakes and some the size of peas. Stir the yolk, just to break it up, and add it a little at a time, pulsing after each addition. When the egg is in, process in long pulses–about 10 secons each–until the dough, which will look granular soon after the egg is added, forms clumps and curds. Just before you reach this stage, the sound of the machine working the dough will change–heads up. Turn the dough out onto a work surface and, very lightly and sparingly, knead the dough just to incorporate any dry ingredients that might have escaped mixing.

TO PRESS THE DOUGH INTO THE PAN:
Press the dough evenly over the bottom and up the sides of a lightly buttered 9-inch fluted tart pan with a removeable bottom. Press just hard enouh the the pieces cling together but don’t be too heavy-handed that you lose the crumbly texture. Freeze the crust for at least 30 minutes, preferably longer, before baking.

TO PARTIALLY OR FULLY BAKE THE CRUST:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Butter the shiny side of a piece of aluminum foil and fit the foil, buttered side down, tightly against the crust. (Since you froze the crust, you can bake it without weights.) Put the tart pan on a baking sheet and bake the crust for about 30 minutes. Carefully remove the foil. If the crust has puffed, press it down gently with the back of a spoon. Keep a close eye on the crust’s progress–it can go from golden to way too dark in a flash. Transfer the tart pan to a rack and cool the crust before filling.