Ciao everyone! It’s been a little while since I updated the blog – we’ve had a very busy summer with our pizza kiosk, and we are in the middle of a very exciting project involving our much-loved Vanstaurant. More news on that soon!
In between our pizza weekends, recently we’ve been enjoying some beautiful walks around Broadbottom. One of my recent favourites has been to head up to the next village via Gorsey Brow (Broadbottom’s biggest and steepest hill). This is a great walk for three reasons:
- It’s all tarmac, so there is no chance of getting covered in mud.
- It’s home to several very beautiful donkeys, who enjoy a cuddle.
- In late summer and early autumn, it’s a great place to find some delicious blackberries.
Blackberries are in season from August until the end of October, and there are some delicious Italian recipes out there for those of you with a sweet tooth. I don’t know about you, but Giordano and I often find that the real challenge is to get the blackberries home – we both love fresh fruit and often find that we’ve eaten them all before we get them through the door!
Today, we have a delicious recipe for blackberry crostata to share with you. Crostate come in all different sizes and are often topped with glazed, fresh fruits. We’ve enjoyed many of these together over the years as part of our Italian cake breakfasts, and they look and taste wonderful.
You can, of course, make your crostata with any forest fruits you fancy. For example, we have a very big golden raspberry plant in our back garden which is just starting to produce some beautiful fruit. We’ve only had it for a few months, so our hope is that next summer we’ll have enough to make our own raspberry crostata!
How to Make Blackberry Crostata: A Step-by-Step Guide
To make your own blackberry crostata, you will need:
- 285g flour
- 100g sugar
- 125g unsalted butter (at fridge temperature)
- 2 whole eggs
- 8g powdered yeast
- A few drops of vanilla essence
- Lemon zest
- Blackberry jam
- Fresh blackberries
- Icing sugar for dusting
On your worktop or wooden chopping board, tip out the measured flour and form a little mound with it. Make a well in the centre of the hill and break in the two eggs.
Add in the cold, unsalted butter (broken into chunks), the yeast, vanilla essence, sugar and grate in a little lemon zest. You will need a tiny bit of butter to crease the tin later, so don’t use it all!
Mix all the ingredients together by hand. These should be worked together until you form an even ball of pastry. Work it carefully; the pastry shouldn’t be too warm otherwise it won’t stick together properly! Wrap your ball of pastry in clingfilm and leave it to rest in the fridge for half an hour.
Grease your crostata tin with a tiny bit of butter and dust in a little flour too.
Sprinkle a little flour on your worktop or chopping board. Roll out 3/4 of your pastry to form the base of your crostata; this should be around half a centimetre thick and should cover the base and sides of your crostata tin.
Line your pastry case with the blackberry jam, stopping just below the border.
Take the remaining quarter of your pastry and roll it out into strips, again around half a centimetre thick. Lay these on top of your crostata in the traditional lattice pattern. If you don’t want to roll out each individual strip by hand, you can roll it all out evenly and use a cutter to make your strips.
Place the crostata in a preheated oven at 175° (Gas Mark 4) and bake for around 20-25 minutes. Test with a pick to make sure it’s ready.
Leave to cool, add the fresh blackberries and dust with icing sugar.
Let us know how you get on with this recipe in the comments. I will be back very soon with a Vanstaurant update!
Take care, a presto,
Laura