TasteIT-Cucina con Sannetta
Hi everyone, tomorrow is the Mother’s day and I spent all day cooking something for my mum for this occasion. I decided to make a lemon pie and some cookies with cute sugar paste decorations. It was exhausting cause it was the first time in my life I used sugar paste to decorate something. I know.. this may seem impossible since we’re always watching baking TV shows and they ALWAYS use sugar paste, almost for everything! But here in Italy, it’s not such an usual decorative item yet. We mostly use whipped cream, creams … this is a recent way to decorate cakes and cookies here and it’s now getting a big success.
On the right you can see the lemon pie made with the classic “Pasta Frolla” which is really friable dough and the same dough I used for cookies. There are different versions of Pasta Frolla in which the amount of butter can change and eventually you can put honey or you can substitute part of the flour with some cocoa powder.
In this casethhe “pasta frolla” dough is made of:
500 g flour type “00”
250 g soft butter
2 eggs
250 g sugar (or powdered sugar) *I used 150 g powdered sugar and 100 g normal sugar*
1 lemon and 1 orange grated skins
Ingredients must be kneaded all together( in a bowl or on a work surface) with your hands till you obtain a smooth dough ball. Then the dough must rest in the fridge for about half a hour. Finally you can use it to make pie and cookies. Remember to put them on an oven pan which you first greased and floured.
The lemon custard can be obtained by using:
1 lemon juice and grated skin
1 glass of sugar
1 glass of water
1 egg
1 tablespoon potato starch
First beat the egg with sugar, lemon skin and potatostarch. Then add the lemon juice and water. Stir and cook at very low heat and continue stiring till you get a cream.Finally flavor the pie with lemon custard before cooking it in the oven (180°C till the dough gets golden).
About cookies, wait till they cool down then you can decorate them though it’s better you made decorations before starting making the dough.
I glued the sugar paste to the cookies surface by using honey, just a little bit on the cookie surface. Instead I glued sugar paste flowers and letters to the sugar base just by using water, moisturizing a little just one side of the decorations.
You can make cute roses in a very simple way: just make little balls of sugar paste and flatten them to get petals then for the typical rose shape by attaching each petal to one other with your hands. I’ll see if I can make a video tutorial to show you how to make sugarpaste flowers in the next days.
*Pay attention to use powdered sugar when you’re kneading the sugar paste.
*The sugar paste must not rest in the fridge or it will melt and this is really unfortunate.
Leaves are simply made by using a heart shaped cutter then I gently carved each leaf.
* Gel colorants are the best for coloring the sugar paste.
Hope you enjoyed, happy Mother’s day and see you next time with great recipes and tutorials ^-^