Saturday, November 27, 2010

Daring Bakers: Chocolate Crostata




This month for Daring Bakers the challenge was to make a crostata. A crostata is basically just the Italian version of pie. It can be made in a tart pan or made free-form. The filling was up to us but the host showed versions filled with jam and with pastry cream. Well for me either of those sound fantastic - especially the pastry cream version. Problem was the timing meant this would be a perfect dessert to make for my wife's birthday and she has pretty much the opposite taste of me when it comes to dessert.

I decided to compromise. I would attempt to make a chocolate and pastry cream version. I
made half of the pastry cream recipe in the challange and poured it in the bottom and poured some chocolate ganache on the top. I made the crust, ganache, and
pastry cream all with a little bit of orange zest added since I think orange goes well with chocolate. I wasn't really sure how it would work baking the ganache but it turned out incredibly. The chocolate was just the right consistency and the pastry cream helped offset the strong chocolate flavor just enough. My wife and I both loved it.

This months challenge was hosted by Simona at briciole. Simona has an Italian cooking blog ( she is an Italian woman living in California) that looks fantastic. An interesting thing that I have not seen before - her blog posts all include an MP3 of her pronouncing all the Italian words in the blog. Cool idea for people trying to learn Italian or just if you want
to sound better ordering Italian food.

If you want to try your own crostata here is the challange we used with the recipe for the crust and the pastry cream -Daring Bakers' Crostata Challange.

8 comments:

Renata said...

What a wonderful combination! Perfect take on the challenge.

veena said...

wow!!!!! looks so inviting:-)

Leandra said...

Amazing!!! I love you Crostata!

shaz said...

Hi Todd, thanks for visiting my blog. I love ganache, and paired with orange, mmm, just divine. I never realised I could use it as a pie filling. Must try that very soon. Great job on the challenge!

Anonymous said...

Great job! I best the pastry cream and the chocolate combo tasted fantastic.

Simona Carini said...

Great idea to make a birthday crostata. Very interesting that the chocolate ganache baked well. I am glad you like the audio file idea. The search field on the blog should be helpful in finding out whether I mentioned a certain word in a post. And if you have a specific question, feel free to contact me: I like to get suggestions.

Mary said...

That looks amazing! I thought it was blueberry at first, but the chocolate+pastry cream combination sounds perfect. I'm glad both you and your wife liked it. Beautiful lattice work on top.
:)

Lisa said...

Holy moly, that crostata looks insanely fudgy and amazing, not to mention stunning! Love the orange incorporated within. Well done!