Italian Lobster Tail Pastry Recipe

Impress your dinner guests with these exquisite Italian lobster tail pastries.

Introductions:

Italian Lobster Tail Pastries, a delicious, labor-intensive treat that’s a real showstopper. The pastry seems to be similar to Sfogliatelle Ricce but with a different filling. Sfogliatelle are often filled with a mixture involving ricotta, sugar, eggs, and citrus zest. Italian Lobster Tail Pastry Recipe’s spin on it, opting for a filling more like pastry cream, is an intriguing deviation from the norm and would likely add a different flavor and texture profile.

The use of bread flour for its higher protein content makes sense for a dough that needs to have good elasticity to withstand all the stretching and rolling. The additional use of salted butter and vegetable shortening helps with flavor and lamination, ensuring that you end up with a pastry that has the flaky, crispy layers that this treat is known for. The filling, made from sugar, eggs, flour, evaporated milk, salt, orange zest, and vanilla extract, would be creamy with a hint of citrus, balancing out the rich, buttery pastry.

Using a pasta roller is an ingenious way to achieve the thin, uniform sheets of dough required for this recipe, making the laborious process of rolling by hand a bit easier. Even then, the recipe is quite labor-intensive, demanding hours of refrigeration and careful handling, but the result is likely well worth the effort. This recipe would be a challenging but rewarding project for someone who is looking to stretch their baking skills and produce something truly exceptional.

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Prep Time: 5 hours
Cook Time: 25 minutes
Servings: 12 pastries

Ingredients:

For the Pastry:

3 ½ cups bread flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
¾ cup lukewarm water
8 tablespoons salted butter, room temperature
4 tablespoons vegetable shortening

For the Filling:

½ cup sugar
3 large eggs
⅓ cup flour
1 (15-ounce) can evaporated milk
¼ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon orange zest
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For Baking and Garnishing:

2 tablespoons butter, melted
⅛ cup powdered sugar

Directions:

For the Pastry:

Add the bread flour and salt to a large bowl. In another bowl, dissolve the sugar and vanilla in the lukewarm water.
Slowly add the water mixture to the flour, stirring as you incorporate. The dough should be rough and slightly crumbly in texture. It will come together as it is rolled in the pasta maker.
Knead the dough on a flat, floured surface until it becomes a bit smoother. Cut the dough into fourths and place each piece of dough through the pasta roller on the largest setting.
Fold the dough into thirds and put it through the pasta roller again. Repeat until you have a smooth sheet of dough. Repeat with the remaining pieces of dough.
Stack the 4 sheets of dough on top of each other, cover, and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
Roll the stacked dough with a rolling pin to press it into one sheet. You can either move on to the rolling stage or cut the dough into smaller pieces for easier handling.
Roll the dough through the pasta roller on each setting until you reach the thinnest setting. Dust with flour, roll it onto a rolling pin, or connect pieces to form a long sheet.

For Laminating the Dough:

Combine room-temperature butter and shortening in a bowl. Stretch the dough to create a wider sheet and spread the butter mixture onto it. Roll it into a very tight log.
Continue to pull the dough off the rolling pin, generously greasing it, and rolling it into a tight log.
Wrap the log in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

For the Filling:

Whisk together sugar and eggs until well combined. Whisk in flour vigorously to avoid clumping.
Heat evaporated milk in a saucepan until hot. Slowly pour hot milk into the egg mixture while whisking quickly. Once incorporated, add it back to the saucepan and cook on medium-low heat, stirring constantly until it thickens (about 3 minutes).
Whisk in salt, orange zest, and vanilla extract. Set aside to cool.

Assembly and Baking:

Preheat the oven to 400°F.
Remove the dough log from the refrigerator and cut it into 1-inch thick rounds.
Flatten a round and turn it inside out, pushing the center to form a cone.
Fill the cone with 2 tablespoons of filling and seal the edges. Place the pastry on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Repeat with remaining rounds.
Brush each pastry with melted butter and bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown.
Sprinkle hot pastries with powdered sugar and enjoy while warm.