Sweet
Krem pita
Two sheets of puff pastry with a thick layer of cooked custard between them — the cake of every Macedonian pastry shop.
Recipe from Туѓино Јабано
- Prep
- 40 min
- Cook
- 25 min
- Total
- 1 hr 5 min
- Fasting
- Not suitable
Ingredients 10 ingredients
Method
- Bake the two sheets of pastry separately at 200 °C for about 15 minutes, pricked with a fork so they do not rise unevenly. Let them cool completely.
- Whisk the yolks with half the sugar, the cornflour, the flour and a little of the cold milk into a smooth, lump-free mixture.
- Bring the rest of the milk to the boil with the vanilla sugar. Pour the hot milk into the yolk mixture in a thin stream, whisking without stopping, then return it all to the pan.
- Cook over a medium heat, stirring constantly, until the custard thickens and begins to blip, about five minutes. Take it off the heat and stir in the butter.
- Whisk the whites with the remaining sugar to stiff peaks and fold them into the warm custard from underneath. The warm custard pasteurises the whites, and it is the whites that make krem pita light rather than heavy.
- Lay one sheet of pastry in a tin, pour on the custard and level it, then cover with the second sheet, pressing gently.
- Chill for at least four hours, ideally overnight. Dust with icing sugar and cut with a sharp knife dipped in hot water.
If you cannot find it
Substitutions that work outside Macedonia.
- Shop puff pastry
- Two slabs of filo, eight sheets each layered with butter and baked under a weight.
- Cornflour
- Flour alone, 120 g in total; the custard will be slightly less glossy.
- Raw egg whites
- Leave them out and fold 250 ml of whipped double cream into the cooled custard.
