Thursday, January 19, 2006

Sometimes, you need a pastry

So, if you're playing along at home, you know that I like baking, and that I usually bake savory things like breads, popovers (which I could make in my sleep, even though I don't think I've ever blogged about making them), the occasional gougere... I don't usually go for cookies and cakes and other sweet things.

Thus, last night was odd. I was sitting there at about 8:00 and realized that I wanted something sugary. At the first commercial break during Lost, I pulled this out of the oven:

That's a raspberry jam crostata. It's a very shortbread-like butter pastry on the bottom, with whatever jam you like as the filling (ideally, it should be a fairly good quality jam). When it bakes, some of the water in the jam evaporates, so the filling concentrates, and ends up being thick and yummy. There's no messing with tart pans or anything; you just roll out the pastry dough in a freeform "circle", spread jam on top of it, fold the edges over an inch or two, and bake.

I got the recipe here (I left out the almonds and powdered sugar); thank you for this one, Giada. I've made this a few times, and it's darn tasty.

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