Daring Bakers: Crostata

This month was my first time participating in the Daring Kitchen's baking challenge. Each month a host reveals a new challenge in the web-site's private forums and then the 100's participants have until the 27th to attempt it.  Lots of experienced bakers offer tips and advice and you can ask for help in the forums or just post pictures of your completed item.

This month's challenge was crostata with your choice of filling. The base of a crostata is pasta frolla, which is a sweet short crust pastry (or sweet tart dough) made of flour, sugar, butter and eggs.

 

Many of bakers posted that they found the dough too dry and crumbly. The general advice was not to worry if your dough seem dry or cracked: after chilling overnight and working it with a rolling pin it would come together.

Far and away the best advice that was given was to grate chilled butter from the fridge with a cheese grater and then freeze it. Amazing!! It was incredibly easy to do and then when it came time to cut the butter into the flour without melting any it worked perfectly. It helps make a flaky pastry because the butter forms pockets in the crust.

My dough seemed hard to work with at first, but after I rolled it between two pieces of wax paper it came together enough to line a pie tin with.

 

I planned on using pastry cream as a base and then adding a layer of raspberry jam. The pastry cream recipe provided was not getting the best reviews. Some people felt that the result was too rubbery and dry. I decided to use this recipe instead. I made it the night before along with the dough and chilled them both in the fridge overnight.

I baked the tart until it was golden brown and the jam layer was bubbling.

 

Sadly, I wasn't crazy about the result for a few reasons. The pastry cream was delicious but with this version of pastry cream the crust really should have been bind baked beforehand. The recipe for the crust had said to just spread the pastry cream on and then bake together, but my crust soaked in some of the pastry cream and as a result it wasn't as flaky or crisp as I would have liked.

Secondly, the raspberry jam really was too overpowering for the pastry cream. If I were to attempt this again (which I am planning on doing) I would either skip the fruit altogether or just layer on some fresh fruit.

It was a fun experience and I'm already excited to see what December's challenge will be. This time I'll get the challenge done earlier in the month so that I can make a second attempt if I need to before the reveal blog post date.

Happy baking!

Comments

[Chelsey]

hmm I wonder how it would turn out if you made a fruit compote instead of using jam so there's less sugar? A winter version might be nice with cranberry/candied citrus peel throughout... Looks like you could do a lot with this recipe, happy experimenting!

[Mary Dolan]

Welcome to the Daring Bakers! Glad you learned a new trick, and sorry to hear that your crostata wasn't quite how you wanted it. It's a great flavour combination, though, so I hope you get the chance to perfect it! I always want to do more of the challenges, but always run out of time. Oh well, till next month!
:)

[Stef Brek]

Congratulations on your first DB challenge! It looks great even if you weren't too taken with it. That's one of the reasons why I like DB. You try doing something for the first time, figure out what you'd do different the next time, and get tons of ideas on other variations you could do. Good luck next month!

[Shelley Cooney]

Welcome to the DB's and congratulations on beautifully completing your first challenge! Great choice of pastry cream recipe and flavor combination (*wink* - they were the same as mine!), and your crostata looks beautiful. I highly recommend giving it another go - there is such a trial and error aspect to all of the different possibilities of this kind of recipe. I can't wait to see what December brings us!

[Audax Artifex]

Welcome and hello to the DB's and congrats on your very success first challenge. Well done.

Yes I think that it is always best to blind bake the shell completely before filling it makes for the best result. I'm sure you like be able to tweak it to perfect, it is very hard the first time to make it to your tastes. Excellent work on this challenge.

Cheers from Audax in Sydney Australia.

[Mylifeunderthebus]

Well I'd really like to help so you can just send it to me and you can make a clean slate of it! Hahaha ...If you are looking for something more tart I've got 4 cans of cranberries I forgot to use on Thankgiving I could trade you! : )

[Simona Carini]

Welcome to Daring Bakers! I hope you get to experiment more with this challenge and find the combination of baking and ingredients that satisfies your expectations. I like the heart in the center.

[Acookingdad.blogspot.com]

Welcome to the Daring Bakers - I think I will try a straight pastry cream one next time too. Yours looks great.

[Charlotte]

aw wow that is PHENOMENAL!

[slot machine online]

Je flagrante sauter sur l'occasion d'aider si vous êtes capable de me l'envoyer et que vous pourriez probablement composer un nouveau commencement de celui-ci! Je pense que je vais tenter une quinte au four bonne crème une fois suivantes aussi. Votre semble incroyable.

[ankle wellies]

This looks so good. I'm going to try and make it. YUM!