Gosh, I am so glad that I joined the Daring Bakers because I am really enjoying myself month after month. This month was no exception.
The 2010 November Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Simona of briciole. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make pasta frolla for a crostata. She used her own experience as a source, as well as information from Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well.
After two initial days of surfing the net, nail-biting, surfing the net again, sleepless nights - ok ok, I'm exaggerating ( I love my sleep - especially in this sudden freezing weather!) - I decided I would bake the crostata using version 1 of the pasta frolla (both versions can be found by clicking the link below).
With great hints and tips given by the ever-so-lovely Audax, I was confident enough about the pastry case. I absolutely love creme patisserie so any chance for me to use it I would! And then, like I wasn't chuffed with my plan as it is, I found this design (didnt use the recipe though) for an apple rossette on a pie. Well..... thats like a cherry on top!
I was soo happy with coming up with that, I might as well not have actually baked it. Was totally exhausted by all that researching, could've done with someone making me a crostata! :-)
There's my baby daughter trying to run off with one of the apple just when I was getting ready to take a shot of the apples with the crostata! Guess it's keeping it real, lol.
Anyway, the pasta frolla dough is sufficient to line and cover a 23cm flan tin. Seeing that I wasn't covering the crostata and I really wanted to try out these figs that I had bought the day before, I decided to halve the dough and make two 20cm tin crostatas. One being my beautiful apple rosette crostata and the other being a fig frangipane crostata. 
I got the recipe online at FoodLovers but had to cut down on the amounts. It looked gorgeous when it came out of the oven, the gorgeous almondy aroma is totally irresistable but even more then whenn combined with the pastry.
I didn't try the fig frangipane crostata, I rather saved it for a lovely brother-in-law who I knew would appreciate it. The apple rosette crostata with the creme patisserie filling on the other hand.....? Let's just say that I wasn't that willing to share ;-)
I'm so glad I got to try this out, the variations are countless and you can really play around with flavours or use your ultimate favourite. If you do try this out, make sure to check out Audax's tips, such as grating the butter and then freezing it before rubbing with the flour. Genius!!
Thank you Simona and a well done to all the other Daring Bakers xx
