My pastry crust calls for 1/3 cup of butter for every cup of flour....
For a pastry beginner, don't try such a short crust.
Try mine...
1/3 cup Crisco or butter, cup into 1 cup flour which has been stirred with 1/2 tsp salt...cut the fat into the flour until like corn meal....toss the mixture with 4 T of ice water...place on a board and knead about 4 times,,,add a bit of flour orw ater if it's not a smooth dough which holds together...
Chill about 30 minutes and roll out on a floiured board.
And crisco makes a dough that is easier to work with than butter does.
you can double or triple this recipe and it works fine.
There is another pastry recipe that I don't have but I'll bet someone does, where you mix boiling water and some flour then add the rest of the flour. The crust isn't as flaky but it's easy to work.
Linda C

I just use a regular pie crust recipe, the one I would bake a pie in. Or, and I know some people will shake their finger at me, frozen store bought pie crust. It won't be as flaky as phyllo or short crust, more like pocket pies but I have had no complaints.
Clare

The worst thing was the filling oozing out. It made a mess on the baking trays, but also made the turnovers flat. I'm wondering about a puffy crust. The recipe that was a flop had a crust that was basically a very short pie crust--they tasted like pies. They were good but not worth the trouble to make the individual ones, I could have just made a pie a lot quicker and it would have tasted the same. That's what got me thinking why did I bother with all this just to make basically what amounted to little flat pies. I'd like to make turnovers like you get at the bakery, puffier. You know, the kind with the white icing stripes. Is that too advanced for me? Can you buy puff pastry already made and use that?

Well you could try frozen puff pastry.

You can buy frozen puff paste, but the success of the turnovers will depend a lot on how you handle the dough and seal the edges.
I love turnovers made with a good pie crust....after all that's all that puff pastry is is pie crust put together with a different technique....just flour water butter and a little salt.
With pie crust you mix the butter and flour and add water, with puff pastry you mix the flour and water and then add the butter.
Linda c

I make a pie crust that only uses butter, cottage cheese, and flour. You beat 1 cup of butter with 1 cup of cottage cheese, and then stir in 2 cups of flour. You can add salt if you are using unsalted butter - otherwise I find that cottage cheese is salty enough, but then I don't like salt.

This recipe makes a pastry that puffs up, somewhat similar to an Austrian pastry made with cream cheese. I think you can substitute cream cheese for the cottage here in this recipe, but I haven't done that yet.

Lars

I made some awesome peach turnovers this past weekend, though I wouldn't call them "easy!" Tee hee. Not that they were hard--just a lot of repeated chilling of the buttery sour cream dough. But you will be rewarded with the most amazing, flaky, tender turnovers! Check out the link below if interested...

--Gina

Here is a link that might be useful: Lindsey's Luscious Peach Turnovers