How to Use a Pastry Blender

Making Pastry

A pastry blender is a hand-held kitchen tool that enables the mixing of dry ingredients with butter or shortening. When baking pastries, a pastry blender will enable you to produce baked biscuits or other pastries that are light, fluffy and delicious. Pastry blenders are an important tool to have in your tool drawer if you bake regularly. They are not expensive, so the results that they produce make them well worth having in your assortment of kitchen tools. Learn how to use a pastry blender and then get busy making delicious pastries.

Things You'll Need

• Pastry blender
• Large bowl
• Dry ingredients necessary for a biscuit or pastry recipe
• Butter or shortening as called for in the recipe

Instructions

1. Combine all of the dry ingredients in a bowl following your recipe.

2. Add the butter or shortening as called for in the recipe by adding it to the bowl in small chunks.

3. Push the pastry blender into the bowl by holding the bowl with one hand and pushing the pastry blender into the mixture with the other hand. Work the pastry blender by pushing it down, lifting it up, and repeating. Rotate the pastry blender back and forth with your hand to blend all of the ingredients fully.

4. Continue mixing with the pastry blender until your ingredients are the consistency specified in the recipe. Most recipes will tell you how large the lumps of butter or shortening should become while you are mixing. Stop when your ingredients reach this size.

5. Follow your recipe to finish your baking project.

Tips & Warnings

• After fully mixing the dry ingredients with the butter or shortening you can refrigerate the mixture for future baking if desired.