My sister Margaret, who lives in Canada pointed me towards Sfogliatine Glassate. These are delightful puff pastries which are iced on top and with some jam piped on as well. She said that they tasted so good. Indeed she dipped some into coffee. The icing bakes as little flakes or panes creating a lovely pattern on the top. To make them you can use shop bought puff pastry. However for mine I wanted to make my own rough puff pastry. That was simply because I couldn’t buy all butter puff pastry in any of my local stores.
So let me just reiterate, you can use ready rolled puff pastry. Indeed that makes the recipe much simpler. But making rough puff pastry is actually easy too. It is certainly much easier than making the traditional puff pastry. The results with rough puff pastry are certainly very good indeed.
It is very easy to make rough puff pastry. The time required is much shorter than for puff pastry too.
Once you have rolled out your pastry it is covered with icing. Then, after chilling, the pastry is cut into strips and some apricot jam is piped diagonally onto the top, in both directions. That creates a nice pattern. The optimum size is about 1 inch by 4 inches(2.5 cm x 10 cm). But, of course, you can adjust the length.
When baked the pastries puff up and the icing cracks along the lines of the jam.
My Bake
My sfogliatine glassate baked very well. The rough puff pastry rose well and the top flaked as expected.
Each cookie(if I can call them that) was light and crisp with just enough sweetness. I didn’t want to dunk mine in tea. So I ate them to savour the full crispness. I enjoyed them immensely. Indeed I could hardly stop eating them.
These would also be great with ice cream.
Another great Italian recipe is my Almond Cherry Biscotti
Sfogliatine Glassate
Course: Biscuits, CookiesCuisine: ItalianDifficulty: Medium24
servings4
hours20
minutesIngredients
- Pastry
240g(1 1/2 cups _ 1 1/2 tbps, based on scooping packed flour into 250ml cup) plain flour
240g(2 sticks + 1 tbsp) unsalted butter, cold and cubed
120ml(1/2 cup) ice cold water
6g(1 tsp) salt
- Topping
70g(1/2 cup+2 tbsp) icing sugar
20g(1 tbsp) egg white
8g(1 tbsp) plain flour
120g(1/2 cup) strained apricot jam
Directions
- Place the flour, salt and butter into a large bowl.
- Cut the butter into the flour, with two knives or a pastry cutter, until the butter is broken up and still has chunks.
- Add 6-7 tbsp of water and mix around until the mixture starts to clump.
- Use your hands to squeeze the mixture into a butter-flecked dough, add more water if needed.
- Tip the dough onto the work surface and form into a rectangle.
- Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill for 30 minutes.
- Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and roll into a rectangle that is 3 times longer than it is wide(about 16x48cm).
- Fold the top 1/3 of the dough down onto the middle 1/3. Brush off excess flour.
- Fold the bottom 1/3 of the dough up onto the remainder and brush again.
- Turn the dough 90 degrees and roll out and fold again in the same way.
- Wrap the dough and chill it again for 30 minutes.
- Roll the dough out again, at least two times, in the same way, but up to 4 times.
- Wrap the dough and chill for 2hours, or longer.
- Mix the icing sugar into the egg white until it is smooth.
- Add the flour and mix again until smooth, then set the icing aside.
- Roll the dough out, on a sheet of parchment paper, to a rectangle about 23cmx36 cm.
- Spread the icing over the top of the rectangle and chill for one hour.
- Preheat the oven to 200C/400F.
- Cut the dough into 1 to 1 1/4 inch strips along the length.
- Turn the dough 90 degrees and cut again to give strips which are 10cm in length.
- Carefully transfer each strip to a baking tray, leaving a gap between each.
- Pipe four diagonal stripes on each strip, parallel to each other.
- Then pipe four more diagonal stripes in the opposite direction to form a criss-cross pattern.
- Bake the pastries in the oven for 20 minutes.
- Remove them from the oven and leave for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Notes
- You can use ready rolled puff pastry, but the dimensions will be smaller and will give a different yield.