Grandma’s Cake

INGREDIENTS

Ingredients for the shortcrust pastry base:

• 500 g of 00 flour for cakes;
• 250 g of soft butter;
• 200 g of icing sugar;
• The grated zest of 1 lemon
• 2 egg yolks and 1 whole egg

Ingredients for the custard:

• 500 ml of milk;
• 3 egg yolks;
• 40 g of 00 flour;
• 80 g of sugar;
• To taste vanilla or alternatively to taste grated lemon zest

150 g of pine nuts
Icing sugar to tasteadvertising

STEP

1. Let’s see how to make it;
2. Let’s prepare the shortcrust pastry:
   Take a bowl, add the flour, sugar, soft butter, grated lemon zest and make a first dough, forming a sort of sandblasting;
3. Combine the egg yolks and the whole egg and mix quickly;
4. Form a ball, cover with cling film and leave to rest for about 30 minutes in the fridge;
5. While the pastry is resting, let’s prepare the custard:
6. In a saucepan, bring the milk to the boil;
7. In a bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar, add the sifted flour and the lemon zest, or the vanilla, and beat… then pour in 2 ladles of boiling milk, mix well and pour everything into the saucepan, into the remaining milk and mix until a nice smooth cream is formed, without lumps;
8. Pour into a bowl, cover with cling film and leave to cool;
9. Let’s now move on to the composition of the Torta della Nonna;
10. Take a 24 cm diameter tart pan, butter and flour it;
11. After that, take the dough again, separate 2 thirds, roll out with a rolling pin into a round sheet of about half a cm:
12. Place the pastry on the cake tin, remove the excess and prick the entire surface with the prongs of a fork (this will prevent the pastry from rising during cooking);
13. Fill with the custard (now cold), level with a spatula;
14. Now you have two choices: either cover the cake with another sheet of shortcrust pastry, or (as I chose) place some strips of shortcrust pastry on the cake tin;
15. After placing the strips of shortcrust pastry on the cake, brush with a little milk, sprinkle with pine nuts over the entire surface;
16. Bake in the oven at 180 degrees (already hot) for 35/40 minutes, be careful with the oven if you see that the surface is browning too much towards the end, cover with a sheet of baking paper and finish cooking;
17. Remove from the oven and let cool, then place our cake on a serving plate and sprinkle with icing sugar;
18. Now we can finally enjoy this authentic goodness!! FABULOUS!!

NOTE

Store Torta della Nonna in the refrigerator for a couple of days.
You can prepare the pastry in advance, freeze it and defrost it when you need it.