November 2010 Daring Baker's Challenge: Crostata

The 2010 November Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Simona of briciole. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make pasta frolla for a crostata. She used her own experience as a source, as well as information from Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well.

This month I went all crazy and, instead of going for one challenge, I made TWO challenges: tiramisu and crostata.
As I joined the DB on April this year I missed the tiramisu challenge, so I wanted to give it a try and thus, I browsed the Internet to see if it was possible to combine both the crostata and the tiramisu. As you can see, I was succesful ^^
I found the recipe for the tiramisú filling here, and for the pasta frolla I used the 1st version provided by Simona.

The recipes:

Ingredients for the pasta frolla:

100g superfine sugar
235g unbleached all-purpose flour
a pinch of salt
115g cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 large egg and 1 large egg yolk, lightly beaten in a small bowl
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Method for the pasta frolla:

1. Whisk together sugar, flour and salt in a bowl.
2. Rub or cut the butter into the flour until the mixture has the consistency of coarse crumbs. You can do this in the bowl or on your work surface, using your fingertips or an implement of choice.
3. Make a well in the center of the mounded flour and butter mixture and pour the beaten eggs into it.
4. Add the vanilla extract to your flour/butter/egg mixture.
5. Use a fork to incorporate the liquid into the solid ingredients, and then use your fingertips. Knead lightly just until the dough comes together into a ball.
6. Shape the dough into a flat disk and wrap in plastic wrap. Place the dough in the refrigerator and chill for at least two hours. You can refrigerate the dough overnight.
7. Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
8. Roll out a batch of the pasta frolla and cover the base of the tart pan.
9. Cut a piece of parchment paper or aluminum foil large enough to cover the bottom of the crust and extend out a bit over the edges of the pan.
10. You can use pie weights or dry beans to blind bake. Place whatever weight you’re using directly on the parchment paper or aluminum foil in an even layer.
11. Place the crostata shell in the oven and bake for 20 minutes.
12. Remove the weights and parchment paper and continue baking the crostata shell until the border is light golden, about 5 minutes (watch carefully to avoid over-baking, which results in a hard shell). In the absence of weight, the crust may rise in the middle: if that occurs, gently push it back down with the back of a spoon.
13. Remove from the oven and let the crostata shell cool completely before proceeding. If you use a tart pan with removable bottom, release the base from the fluted tart ring, then slide the cooled crostata shell on a serving plate for filling.

Ingredients for the mascarpone cream for the tiramisú:

250g mascarpone cheese
25g icing sugar
1 tablespoon coffee
2 egg yolks
60g caster sugar
2 tablespoons coffee liquor
75g whipped cream

Method for the mascarpone cream for the tiramisú:

1. Mix the mascarpone with the icing sugar with a spoon after adding the tablespoon of coffee.
2. In another bowl, beat the egg yolks with the caster sugar and the coffee liquor.
3. Add the egg yolks to the mascarpone and mix until well combined.
4. Add the whipped cream and mix well.

Method for the assembling:

1. Spread some nutella over the bottom of the crostata shell.

2. Set in this way some coffee soaked savoiardi.

3. Now pour the mascarpone mixture over the savoiardi.

4. Spread the mascarpone mixture until it covers all the inside of the crostata. Decorate with some dusted cocoa powder.

The crostata looks ugly but I swear that it is delicious! It's like eating tiramisú with butter cookies!!!

Vanilla and nutella swirl cookies

Well, first of all, sorry for the poor quality of the photo and the (more than usual) lousy presentation of the cookies -_-U
I meant to give away some of the cookies to friends (and to boyfriend) and to store the very few that were left in a cookie box but, unfortunately, my parents found them and ate them before I had time to take a more decent picture of them T_T
Indeed, this picture was taken with my mobile phone after I packed the cookies that I were going to be given away and before I remembered to store the leftovers. Well, I suppose that's good because it means that they liked them (but I liked them too and I wished I had some more T_T).

This is another recipe (yes, again) from the book Chocolate Galore (in Spanish is Chocolate a gogó). The original recipe from the book calls for 2 teaspoons of nutella, but I used 1 tablespoon in order to get more flavour. And I changed again the amount of sugar that the recipe states, using 50g instead of 75g. Also, I don't know if it's because I used more nutella thant I was told to, but I had to increase the temperature of the oven and the baking time: the original recipe says that 160º degrees Celsius and 10-12 minutes are enough, but I needed 180ºC and 15 minutes to get my cookies done.

So, the recipe is as follows:

Ingredients:        

175g butter (at room temperature)
1 large egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
50g confectioners sugar
1 tablespoon nutella
225g all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon cocoa powder

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180ºC.
2. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Mix in the vanilla extract until well combined. Then add the flour and work the mixture until you have an elastic dough.
4. Divide the dough into two parts and add to one of the parts the cocoa powder and the nutella. Mix until well combined.
5. Extend, with a rolling pin, each dough in a floured surface until you get two rectangles, about 15x20 cm each. If the doughs are not hard enough let them rest in the fridge for 10-15 minutes.
6. Put the nutella dough on the plain dough and press lightly. Trim the edges and fold it, just like a swiss roll.
7. Let the roll rest in the fridge for half an hour. Then cut it in slices of about 6cm each and put them well separated in the baking pan.
8. Bake in the preheated oven for 12-15 minutes until they sighly brown.
9. Take the cookies out from the oven and let them cool for 2-3 minutes in the tray before transfering them to a wire rack. You can keep them for a week in an air-tight container.