YEARS! yes, it took me years of study, experimenting, failing and re-trying to finally master the PERFECT recipe for pasticciotto.

When I first opened this blog I posted a recipe for making Pasticciotto cakes…well, excuse me but back then I had no idea of what I was doing. In fact I am going to take that post down to not confuse you folks here.

Since than I have tried, and tried and tried again, asking friends, relatives, reading online in an attempt to find the perfect recipe. Well, all that study and hard work has been finally paid off! I am proud now to announce that I have found the secret for making THE PERFECT PASTICCIOTTO CAKE.

For those of you who don’t know what I am talking about, pasticciotto is a cake typical from my hometown, Lecce. It s custom to have it freshly baked on a Sunday morning, for breakfast, coming out of church, or after lunch. More than I cake it’s a pie filled with custard and optionally also with some amarenas.

From my understanding, the secret in getting a flaky pie curst is not much related to the amount of butter over flour or butter vs shortening that you use but it depends on NOT OVER MIXING THE DOUGH! You want to just get it coming together, still leaving it a bit cumbering.

Here is the recipe. Give this a try!

Ingredients (one pie of 8 inch)

dough

• 250 g flour
• 60 g shortening
• 60 g unsalted butter
• 50 g sugar
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp millefiori flavoring
• 2 egg yolks

filling

• 2 cups vanilla custard
• 1/3 cup Amarena Fabbri

egg wash

• 1 egg
• 1 tbsp heavy cream

 

In a bowl combine butter, shortening, flour and baking powder

using your hands work the butter and shortening into the flour until it resemble coarse-meal. DO NOT OVER MIX

Add in the millefiori flavoring, egg yolks and sugar

and mix just until the dough start coming together. It will be VERY crumbly, it’s good, that’s how it is suppose to be. DO NOT OVER MIX IT!

I am begging you here!

Divide the dough into 2 parts. Roll out the first half into a thin circle (about 5 mm thick) lay it onto a pie pan

Fill it up with the vanilla custard

then drop some Amarenas

Roll out the second half of dough and seal the edges.

Brush the top with an egg wash and back in pre-heated oven (180 C) for about 35-40 min, or until the pie got a nice golden-brown color.

Remove from the oven and let it get warm. Slice it up and serve it!

This pie is best eaten warm, you can store it in your fridge for 2-3 days and just warm it up in the oven before serving it.

Love

– LittleDani