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Pasticciotti

17/11/2023

Pasticciotti are a traditional dessert from Puglia, especially typical of the Salento area. They are small pastries filled with custard cream and covered with a soft shortcrust pastry. Here is the recipe to prepare pasticciotti:

Ingredients

For the shortcrust pastry:

  • 500 g of type 00 flour
  • 200 g of sugar
  • 200 g of butter at room temperature
  • 2 whole eggs
  • 1 egg yolk
  • Grated zest of 1 lemon

For the custard cream:

  • 500 ml of milk
  • 4 egg yolks
  • 120 g of sugar
  • 40 g of type 00 flour
  • 1 vanilla pod or the grated zest of 1 lemon

Preparation

  1. Start with the shortcrust pastry: in a large bowl or on a work surface, create a well with the flour and place the butter in pieces, sugar, eggs, egg yolk, and grated lemon zest in the center. Quickly work the ingredients until you get a homogeneous mixture. Form a dough ball, wrap it in cling film, and let it rest in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.

  2. For the custard cream, heat the milk with the vanilla pod slit lengthwise (or lemon zest) until it is about to boil. In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks with sugar until you have a light and fluffy mixture, then add the sifted flour and mix.

  3. Remove the vanilla pod (or lemon zest) from the milk and slowly pour the hot milk onto the egg, sugar, and flour mixture, stirring continuously. Transfer everything back to the heat and let the cream thicken, still stirring, until it reaches boiling. Once the cream is thick, turn off the heat and let it cool down.

  4. Take the shortcrust pastry out of the refrigerator, roll it out with a rolling pin on a lightly floured surface to a thickness of about 5 millimeters. Line some pasticciotto molds with the pastry, fill them with the cold custard cream and cover with another layer of shortcrust pastry.

  5. Seal the edges with your fingers or with the help of a fork, brush the surface with a little beaten egg, and bake at 180 °C for about 20 minutes or until golden.

Once baked, let the pasticciotti cool down before serving.

Curiosity

Pasticciotti can be enriched with additions to the cream, such as syrup-soaked cherries or chocolate, for delicious variations on the classic.

The name “pasticciotto” comes from the fact that these pastries were originally made with the leftover shortcrust pastry and custard cream, thus “messing up” together the residual ingredients of other preparations.