BeyondPasta

One of my favorite cakes: crostata alla marmellata, that is jam pie :)

I have already talked about crostata when I gave you the recipe of quite possibly my very favorite cake, the walnut crostata. And here we have a crostata again, what they have in common is the pie crust, a lovely pasta frolla. Now that I think about it, it may very well be the case that I am in love with the dough, and I like some fillings better than others :P

Well this pie is a must for me. It tastes great, it is really hard to mess up, you can have many variations depending on the flavor of jam, or preserve you feel in the mood for, plus it looks so pretty and again, it tastes so good!

I think the best results are with apricot preserve, but you are free to use your favorite flavor and experiment!

Yesterday I made a smaller version of the pie in a pirex dish, I am very satisfied with the result :) With the leftover dough I made some fingerprint cookies filled with Nutella :P

Ingredients

• 1 dose of classic pasta frolla (as explained here)
  • 1 1/2 cup + 2 tbs all-purpose flour (250 gr)
  • 7 tbs butter (100 gr)
  • scant 1/2 cup sugar (100 gr)
  • 1 pinch salt
  • 1 egg
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 1 tsp brandy or other favorite liquor (optional)
• 9 oz. (250 gr) apricot preserve for a 9″ (23 cm) pie dish
• 1 egg beaten to brush the dough (optional)

Directions

Prepare the pasta frolla by sifting the flour, add the butter in small chunks and let warm at room temperature just a little bit. With your fingertips mix the butter and the flour until you get a homogeneous mixture, similar to sand. Add sugar a pinch of salt, the egg and the egg yolk, the liquor if using, and quickly mix everything together to form a ball (picture 1). Wrap in plastic and let rest in the fridge fridge for 30 minutes.

Grease with butter and flour a pie dish.

Take the dough out of the fridge, cut 2/3 for the pie crust, wrap the rest of the dough and return to the fridge untile ready to use.

Roll the dough in a circle larger than your pan, you will not need a lot of height on the sides, less than 1″ (2.5 cm) should be enough. Flour and turn when rolling to prevent the dough from sticking to the countertop. Lay the dough on top of your pan, adhere the sides and cut any dough that sticks out too high.

Poke the bottom of the pie with a fork (picture 2).

Cover with the preserve and make an even layer.

Get the dough from the fridge, roll and cut in strips to make a pattern on top of the pie (picture 3). You can also use a cookie cutter and cut shapes to position on top of the pie if you’d like. You can also skip the decoration, but i simply love this dough so the more the merrier for me :P

Turn on the oven at 375°F (190°C). Let the pie rest in the fridge while the oven reaches temperature.

To help the dough look better you can brush the top with a beaten egg, this is only if you made some decorations on top. When the oven is ready, toss the pie in and bake for 30 minutes.

Let cool the pie and enjoy! I just did :P

I know I am a geek but, doesn’t the pic here look like Pacman??

PS: If you made fingerprint cookies as I did with the leftover dough it will take between 10 and 15 minutes of baking depending on how thick you made them. When the bottom is light brown they are ready.