Week 27, February 21, 2011: Pusties

I was so spoiled with good food and great pastries growing up.

Admiring the magnificence of the first pustie out of the tray... maybe the next batch will be prettier.

Every big event was centered around a menu.  I remember trays of cannoli, napoleons, cream puffs, eclairs, pusties, macaroons, and biscotti cookies.  Ang and I were talking about my party and the first big topic was, what are we going to eat?  My only stipulation was I needed tomato pie and I'd like to make my cakes.  (Tomato pie, for those of you who haven't had the pleasure is a pizza made with sweeter sauce and topped with a sprinkling of romano or parmesan cheese instead of drowned in mozzarella.  It's heaven in slice form)

When people think of Italian families and the hubs of good Italian cooking and baking, our area always comes up.
For example:
http://stateofthereunion.com/a-land-of-riggies-and-pusties

Pasticciotti, aka pusties are my favorite Italian pastry.  They're like a little brown-sugar cookie crusted pie filled with chocolate or vanilla pudding.  Simple, but amazing.  They aren't like cannoli, where everyone and their aunt tries to make them and they run the gamut of melt in your mouth to "what did I just put in my mouth?"  With pusties, few places make them, even fewer people and they're always good.  The fact is, I've never had a bad pustie.  So, armed with one of our staff member's family recipes and the gift of pustie tins, I set out to make something delicious.

The recipe seemed easy enough: flour, brown sugar, vanilla, salt, milk, eggs and shortening.


  Mix together and pat 3/4 of mix into tins.

This part actually took FOREVER!
Then, make pudding (I did stovetop pudding for all--there's something so delicious about it).

 Spoon pudding into doughed tins and pat a little top for each... brush with some egg and bake for 25ish mins and voila! Pusties.

So, issue with the first batch of pusties was that there was wayyyy too much dough.  They seemed to soften up after a day or two in the fridge- Nan informed us that her dessert pustie last night and breakfast one today were good.  I must concur-- I've had four or five and each day they were better.  But, for the second and third runs, I made 15 pusties as opposed to twelve and wound up needing more pudding.

Issue with this with batch two, was that they weren't as sturdy.  So, when I trayed them up to bring to a party this afternoon and it tipped, three smooshed.  Not cool.

I'm letting batch three cool longer- and I'll let you know if I found the magic formula.

In other news, caramel and I haven't reached an agreement yet, but we will... I'm hoping by the next post.

Have a good week!