We describe a simple method for creating Laguerre–Gauss (LG) optical vortex beams from Hermite–Gauss (HG) modes with a single cylinder lens. The diverging vortex created by the cylinder lens has the correct intensity distribution in the far-field but its residual longitudinal astigmatism causes the vortex to revert to the original HG mode when it is brought to a focus. We show that an appropriate small tilt of the focusing lens can prevent this effect by introducing a compensating astigmatism. The corrected vortex is a good approximation to an exact LG mode and should be useful for a variety of demonstrations and experiments.