Fig Newtons Pasta Frolla (or Pasta Flora)

Sharing is caring!

Pasta Frolla is an Italian shortbread pastry made with fat, flour, salt, sugar and flavour, such as vanilla or citrus zest, which are bound with an egg.  

The word “pasta” means dough and “frolla”, as explained to me by my friend Simona, means tender in Italian, as it is a very flaky dough.

In Greece we make a similar  one which is called Pasta Flora, which is topped with Jam.

However, Pasta Flora is quite different as you will see that the ingredients and method of making it is similar to a cake rather than a tart.

What is the ratio for the shortcrust pastry?

The ratio I use for making the shortcrust pastry is 1:2 that is for every 100 grams butter, I add 200 grams of flour, although the Italian add more butter, which makes it more flaky but also with more calories.

To sweeten the crust, we can add crystal sugar, brown sugar, icing sugar etc., but each kind will have a different texture.

I usually don’t add too much sugar when making Pasta Frolla as the Jam on top will make it too sweet.

We can cut the cold butter into very small pieces or even better to grate it on the big holes of a box grater.

Some of the butter will stick on the grater so a good way to clean it up is to reserve some of the flour, with which to clean up the grater.

We then add the remaining ingredients and the egg will help to bind the dough.

A much easier way is to make the dough in a food processor. If you have a food processor which can take all the ingredients, you can have the dough ready in five minutes.

Unfortunately I only have a mini food processor which I have to make the dough in batches. I add some butter, flour and icing sugar (you can use regular sugar if you prefer) and pulse it in batches until it resembles with coarse meal.

I then bind the mixture with an egg(s).

You can watch me making it in the video.

During the past years I’ve made some different variations of the crust either using regular butter or buffalo butter, margarine, olive oil or butter combined with shortening. The taste and texture differs depending on which one you prefer but the one I like best is with butter.

The ingredients should be cold when making the crust and before baking it you should put it in the refrigerator for a while.

Each time I decided to post one of the recipes of Pasta Frolla I made, something came up and kept postponing it, so today you’ll see all the different variations I’ve made.

The above is a Pasta Frolla with Cherry Jam and Cherry Preserve. I made it in a smaller baking tin so the dough was enough to cover the sides as well. In this one I used brown sugar.

Here I made mini tarts with strawberry jam and Seville orange marmalade, which I baked them in a muffin tin for about 20 minutes.

In this one I used a few leftover fruit preserves which I pureed in a food processor. In the center I used mixed citrus marmalade.

For this one, I made the crust with 200 grams butter and 50 grams shortening.

Here is one with Quince Jam and Chestnut Puree in the middle, topped with quince jam.

For those of you who love figs, you will love my Fig Newton Pasta Frolla, which I made a few days ago, hence the Christmas decorations.

I named it after the Fig Newtons biscuits, which I loved as a kid and which was so similar in taste.

Kopiaste and Kali Orexi!

Sharing is caring!