With a stash of sweet pastry (pate sucree or pasta frolla), you can whip up a crostata with nothing more than a jar of homemade jam.

Last week, we had an impromptu family dinner, and I pulled together a giant crostata (11' x 17") in a large cookie sheet.  Crostata is pretty simple, an Italian tart: crust on the bottom, lattice on the top, and cooked fruit in the middle.   A  quickfire solution for getting that fruit filling into your crostata without busting out another pot to wash, is to dip into your stash of homemade preserves.

For a large crostata, you will need approximately enough dough for 2 double crusted pies, and one 500 ml jar of jam!  This version happened to be apricot-loganberry.

My favourite recipe for pasta frollo comes from my dog-eared copy of Baking with Julia (just as good now as it was in 1996!), but you can use whatever lightly sweet pastry dough you prefer.  Don't forget that you can make pastry in advance and keep in the freezer

Assemble with pastry on the bottom, 500 ml of jam spread evenly on top of the pastry, and pastry lattice on top.  Bake at 375 degrees for 35-45 minutes.  If you want to get fancier, brush the top with egg wash and sprinkle with granulated sugar.  Let it cool before cutting and serving.

That's it!