Crostata di Lamponi (e Crema Pasticcera alla Menta) – Raspberry Cake

I have already wrote about the basic recipe of the crostata, which is definitely my favorite breakfast cake. But this one is a very special one 🙂 moreover the raspberries and the mint are from our garden, so it was just a perfect idea 🙂

The pastry is the same I use to make, but the filling is made with fresh raspberries (one of my favorite fruits) and with a cream in Italy we call “crema pasticcera”, rich with yolks but in this case I also flavored it with some fresh leaves of peppermint, and the result is extremely fresh and it matches perfectly with the raspberries 🙂

Let’s see!

INGREDIENTS (28 cm cake):

Pastry:

240 g flour (I used 180 g Einkorn flour and 60 g whole spelt flour)
130 g butter
110 g sugar
2 yolks (and if needed a spoon of egg whites)
the zest of one lemon, untreated
a teaspoon of salt

Crema pasticcera (cream):

400 ml fresh whole milk
100 g yolks (5-6)
100 g sugar
30 g rice starch (corn starch is also fine)
the zest of a lemon, untreated
10-12 leaves of fresh peppermint

Topping:

400-500 g raspberries

First of all we have to prepare the pastry: put in one bowl the flour (which you must previously sift two times) and the butter cut into small pieces (the butter must be cold), and mix together until you have a sandy texture. Then add the sugar, the yolks, the lemon zest and the salt, and start mixing all together energetically. The pastry is ready when you have a homogeneous dough. This process should be made as fast as possible, the butter inside must not get too much warm.
Then take the pasta, flatten it a bit, just to have about a square shape, put it in a plastic wrap and let it rest in the fridge for at least 2 hours, but better 4-5 hours (you can also leave it overnight).
Now that the pasta frolla is more stable, put some flour on your working table and flatten the pastry using a rolling pin at a thickness of about 3-4 mm.
Now roll the pasta frolla on the rolling pin, and put it into a crostata pan (before grease it with some butter), paying attention not to break it.
Fit nicely the pasta frolla in the cake pan, and cut the exceeding pastry (you can make biscuits with that).
Now, with a fork, pierce all the surface of the pasta frolla, then place a baking paper inside and cover the surface with dried beans, in this way while baking it will not rise and it will not break the bottom of the cake.
Bake at 170-175 °C, fan-assisted mode, for about 21-23 minutes. It’s ready when it gets a nice color, hazelnut/gold. When it’s ready, remove the beans and let it cool down completely.
Now we can prepare the cream. But at least 30 minutes before, place a large bowl in the freezer. Then take a pot, add the milk and also the lemon zest and the mint leaves, and start to boil it.
While the milk is boiling, take another pot, add the yolks, then the sugar and the starch, and whisk manually until you obtain a cream (few seconds, it must not be fluffy, just creamy).
When the milk reach the boiling point, start pouring it in the pot with the yolks, do it in 3 different steps (with a filter, to remove the lemon zest and the mint leaves), and keep whisking.
When you added all the milk, place the pot on the fire again and keep whisking until the mixture become a cream.
When you obtain a cream (not too thick), remove it from the fire and pour it in the frozen bowl. You have to keep whisking until you reduce the cream temperature at 50 °C, you will recognize it when the cream become nice and shiny.
When it’s ready, cover the cream with a plastic foil, directly in contact with the cream so it will not create a skin on the surface. Keep it aside.
When the cream cool down a little bit, we can assemble the cake. Pour all the cream inside the pastry, and then simply place the raspberries on the top, very easy 🙂
After the first day, I suggest to keep the cake in the fridge and to eat it in the following 1-2 days.