This is the cake that I made for Eli’s birthday today!!! I had made a similar version at another dinner, and, although the filling was not the same, in reality what you taste is the orange flower water, that’s why I called it this way. We had also a little discussion on how to translate crostata and could not come up with a good word. I do not think that ‘tart’ is exactly the same, and, although ‘pasta frolla’ is similar to the dough that you make for pies, it is not the same and a crostata is not a pie. Also wikipedia does not translate crostata, so crostata it is!
First, we have to make pasta frolla, the dough. I am using the version of gennarino.org. The thing about pasta frolla is that everything needs to be very cold and you need to work it as little as possible.
So you take 240gr of flower, 80gr of powder sugar and half a packet (8gr) of baking powder, you mix them together and, if you feel like it, you sift everything. At this point, you take 160gr of butter straigth out of the fridge and you cut it in little cubes on the flower mix. Use your fingers to mix it with the flower making a heap of crumbles. Add 2 yolks and one table spoon of orange flower water and mix first with a fork and at the end with your hands, until you have a uniform ball of dough. The least you work on it with your hands, the better! Put the ball in a close container or wrap it in cling-film and put it in the fridge for at least 1/2 hour, a hour is better.
While the dough is resting in the fridge, we can prepare the crema pasticcera, which is an easier version of custard cream. Warm 250ml of milk with one teaspoon of orange flower water. In another pot, mix two yolks, 60gr of sugar, 20gr of corn starch, mix well so that the mixture is smooth. Add the warm milk little by little until everything is mixed together and put on medium heat. As the mixture comes to the boil, it will thicken. Cook for another few minutes, mixing well so that it does not burn on the bottom of the pot and it remains smooth. Don’t worry if it looks lumpy, just mix faster. Put the crema aside.
Prepare a 26cm pan (it can be a low one, this cake does not rise much) by rubbing the inside of the pan with butter, adding a tablespoon of flour and shaking it around to lightly coat the inside.
When the time is up, take out the pasta frolla from the fridge and put some 1/5 of it aside. Don’t forget to put the oven on at 180 degrees. Roll the rest of the dough out on a lightly floured surface and transfer to the pan helping yourself by wrapping the dough around the roll. Now, with pasta frolla this is very difficult to do, so don’t dispare. In fact, what I usually end up having is a patchwork of PIECES of pasta frolla in the pan, but that’s ok because you can gently press on the dough in the pan with the palm of your hand, and it will be all right. Make the border uniform and a bit thick.
At this point you can take the crema pasticcera and spread it on the cake. Then, you can take some jam or marmelade and spread a think layer on top of the crema. Finally, take the 1/5 of dough that you had left aside, roll it out, and cut strips of dough to arrage them in crossing squares on the cake. Bake at 180 for 45 minutes or so and enjoy cold!