Certain people will tell you that there is ONE and ONLY ONE recipe for something like this cake — and for thousands of other "named" recipes. I don't subscribe to that viewpoint. A couple of days ago, I made a gâteau basque based on several recipes I found on the internet. Some instructed me to fill the cake with cherry jam. Others said to fill it with crème d'amandes (almond cream) or crème pâtissière (pastry cream). I had two-thirds of a jar of Bonne Maman confiture de cerises in the refrigerator, so that's what I chose to use. And because I was putting cherry jam inside the cake, I substituted kirsch (cherry brandy) for the vanilla or rum in some of the recipes I found.
This kind of cake could be made with any confiture you like — abricots, myrtilles, fraises, pêches....I bet it would be good with sliced bananas inside.
The dough resembles what I call a cookie dough, others call a shortbread dough, and still others call une pâte sablée. The dough is sticky and not very easy to work with. But since it's sort of a half-batter, half-dough, it's easy to patch it when it tears as you try to put it into the cake pan. Make sure the dough has had plenty of time to cool down and firm up in the refrigerator before you roll it out. I didn't brush the top with egg yolk because I wasn't planning to serve it to company. It was just for our homespun pleasure. It is delicious.
I'll put a recipe in the comments. This is a cake I've made before, but maybe only once, in 2006. I was taking it to a potluck dinner, so I glazed it to make it look more appetizing. Here's a link to a post about that gâteau basque, which I filled with plum jam (confiture de prunes).
Gâteau basque
ReplyDeleteA buttery cake filled with cherry jam
2 eggs
200 g (1¾ sticks, or 14 tablespoons) softened butter
200 g (¾ cup) sugar
300 g (2½ cups) flour
1 pinch of salt
½ tsp. vanilla extract, rum, or kirsch
200 g (¾ cup) cherry jam
½ tsp. baking powder
Mix together the flour, butter, sugar, baking powder, salt, eggs, and vanilla (I prefer kirsch, a cherry brandy) either in a stand mixer or using a large bowl and your hands. Knead the dough until it is smooth. Form it into a ball and put it in the refrigerator for a minimum of 30 minutes — longer is better.
When the dough is cold, butter a 9 or 10 inch cake pan — not ncessary if you are using a silicone or other non-stick pan. Divide the dough ball into two portions, one slightly larger than the other (about one-third to two-thirds).
Roll out the larger piece of dough to fit into the bottom of the cake pan and a little way up the sides of the pan. Don’t worry if the dough is sticky. If it tears, just patch it with extra pieces of dough. (Remember, this will cook up as a cake, not a pie.)
Pour the jam onto the bottom layer of dough and spread it around, leaving a border of bare dough around it. Roll out the smaller piece of dough and place it over the first. Press down the the edges to stick the two pieces of dough together.
Optionally, brush the top of the dough with an egg yolk beaten with a few drops of water.
Bake the cake in an oven pre-heated to 350ºF for 35 to 45 minutes until it has risen and turns golden brown.
I mostly followed this French recipe to make my version of this cake.
Sitting with my morning coffee wishing I had a piece of that.
ReplyDeleteThis is fun to see, because a student of mine (an exchange student from Germany, in fact!), made this for our class one day (and she used jam, too). But, she thought that hers had maybe not turned out right. It was very dry and didn't rise much... more like dense graham cracker. Yours looks like maybe it has the consistency of cornbread? or is cornbread crumblier and lighter?
ReplyDeleteIt is slightly crumbly but not crisp. Maybe the student didn't put in any baking powder. Did she call it a gâteau basque?
DeleteCopied and printed, looks like fun
ReplyDeleteThis looks very tasty. We used to see Bonne Maman here in the stores, but not for a couple years.
ReplyDeleteI think I've eaten it with prune jam rather than plum - if you get what I mean!
ReplyDeleteFar breton is a cream cake with prunes in it. Those are called pruneaux in French. Prunes are plums in French. I had made plum jam with plums from a neighbor's tree back when I made that first Gâteau basque.
Deletechm, wishing you a Happy New Year....haven't seen around these parts lately.
ReplyDeleteI haven't heard anything from CHM in a while either.
DeleteI missed this post earlier. I hope CHM is still following your blogs. I miss hearing from him.
ReplyDeleteI started going through my backlog of various posts in my Feedly feed, and saw this. The first time I had a Gateau Basque was 20+ years ago when we were visiting friends in the Basque region whom we had met while staying at a gite years before. At the end of dinner, the host said he was going to get a Gateau Basque, and his little son (the next time we saw them, the "little son" was now a policeman) was so excited. We went to a nearby Patisserie, and the GB we got was absolutely fantastic. But we haven't had much luck with GB since then, both in the Basque region and making it once at home. So I'll have to try your recipe. And a belated Happy New Year!
ReplyDeleteHi Bob, I'm curious to know if that GB you had back then was made with a filling of cherries or of pastry cream.
DeleteHi Ken, I'm pretty sure the one we had in Handaye over 20 years ago was with cherry filling. I believe some of the subsequent ones were cherry and some were pastry cream.
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