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well, that is pasta flora, enjoyed by greeks everywhere. my mom has made this for many of my friends (and us, her family, of course), and they can't get enough. a lot of greece was ruled by the venetians for many years, so i can see that this was probably originally an italian recipe, but maybe the other way around, too? don't know. interestingly, my friend's mom has been making this for years, and she is argentinean. they call it pasta fROla. in any case, this is really yummy!

is that a 1/4 sheet or a 1/2 sheet cookie sheet?

@athena
It's pretty amazing how far back some of these recipes can go and how many cultures have a take on them. Greece, Italy, Argentina. Any other takers out there? :)

@phageintosis
The sheet shown is 10"X15" and 1/4" deep. We find that the 1/4" depth works well in terms of the desired thickness. We've made it before with 1/2"depth, but it kind of impacted the overall texture, but some people may prefer a thicker dessert.

Actually, in Italian 'pasta frolla' means shortcrust pastry
(see wiki http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasta_frolla) and it's used to make such jam 'crostate', which are extremely common all across Italy (crostata is singular, crostate plural). However, also lighther types of pastry dough, made with less fat than a classical shortcrust, are fairly common.

My granny, also from Apulia not far from Vieste, taught me her version. My granny's recipe asks for butter instead of oil and it proceed like for shortcust pastry (flour butter, then sugar and eggs) but with addition of baking powder because of the limited amount of fat (80g of butter for 300g of flour = ~ 1/3 cup of butter every 3 cups of flour).

I hope it helps!

I'm neither a baker nor a big dessert person, but this is now in my regular rotation and is always a hit at dinner parties with coffee. I love it and I even add a bit more citrus zest than listed. Yum!