If you know my blog a little, you’ll have noticed that bread-making and I aren’t a great love story. I do very little of it. But if there’s one thing I’d been wanting to try for ages, it’s brioche. I once tried to make a Buchty brioche (the famous one!) but the result wasn’t very conclusive and I gave up, telling myself that bread-making really wasn’t for me! And yet, regularly when doing my shopping, I’d come back with a little cube of fresh yeast “just in case” (without ever using it). Until the day…
I had a mad craving for a tropézienne with exotic flavours. The cream, the fruit… easy-peasy! But the brioche? I tried a Michalak recipe (the baguette-shaped tropézienne published in Pâtisseries et compagnie) but I got a liquid dough!!! I threw it all away and went looking for another recipe (by I-can’t-remember-which-great-pastry-chef) — the dough was thicker but ultra-sticky and impossible to work with. I baked it anyway so as not to throw it away, but the result was very disappointing. And then I came across the tropézienne recipe by Chloé Délice and then… a miracle! The brioche was perfect!
So I made a rum vanilla diplomat cream and added pieces of exotic fruit in the centre (pineapple, mango, passion fruit and a little lime zest). Only downside: the juice from the fruit tends to escape… which is why I advise you to place the fruit directly on the brioche so that it absorbs this excess liquid. Apart from that, it was really very good!
Ingredients & Method
4 components · Full recipe
Brioche
Ingredients
- 250 g (8.8 oz) flour
- 25 g (0.9 oz) sugar
- 3 g (0.1 oz) salt
- 10 g (0.4 oz) fresh yeast
- 110 ml (3.7 fl oz) milk
- 50 g (1.8 oz) whole eggs
- 1 tablespoon orange blossom water
- 50 g (1.8 oz) softened butter
- 1 egg for glazing
- pearl sugar
- icing sugar
Method
1
Place the flour in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook.
2
Add the sugar, salt, and crumbled fresh yeast (making sure the 3 ingredients do not touch each other), then the eggs, milk, and orange blossom water.
3
Mix at medium speed for 10 minutes.
4
Add the softened butter all at once and continue kneading for 10 minutes. The dough should pull away from the sides of the bowl.
5
Leave the dough to rise for 1 hour at room temperature.
6
Knock back the dough: punch it down firmly to expel the carbon dioxide produced by the yeast and accumulated during proving. The air bubbles are distributed more evenly through the dough, resulting in a more regular crumb structure.
7
Place the dough in the refrigerator for 1 hour or overnight.
8
Knock back the dough again, shape it into a ball, then flatten with a rolling pin to a round of 20 cm (7.9 in) in diameter.
9
Brush with whole egg and leave the dough to prove for 30 minutes to 1 hour at room temperature. If nothing is happening after an hour (if it is not very warm), place it in the oven at the minimum temperature (30–40°C / 104°F, proving function).
10
Preheat the oven to 180°C / 350°F (fan-assisted).
11
Brush with whole egg again, sprinkle generously with pearl sugar. Bake for 20 minutes (depending on your oven).
12
Leave to cool on a wire rack.
Rum Vanilla Diplomat Cream
Ingredients
- 250 g (8.8 oz) milk
- 1 vanilla pod
- 40 g (1.4 oz) egg yolks
- 60 g (2.1 oz) sugar
- 25 g (0.9 oz) cornstarch
- 1 to 2 tablespoons rum (to taste), optional
- 3 g (0.1 oz) leaf gelatine
- 100 g (3.5 oz) double cream
Method
1
Soak the gelatine leaves in very cold water.
2
In a bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until the mixture turns pale.
3
Add the cornstarch and mix.
4
Bring the milk to the boil with the vanilla seeds and pod in a large saucepan. Pour three-quarters of the milk into the bowl in a thin stream, whisking constantly, then pour everything back into the saucepan with the remaining hot milk.
5
Whisk over medium heat until the cream thickens, about 3 minutes.
6
Off the heat, add the squeezed gelatine and the rum. Mix.
7
Pour into a dish, cover with cling film touching the surface and leave to cool.
8
Once the pastry cream is well chilled, remove it from the refrigerator and work it with a whisk until smooth.
9
Whip the double cream to a chantilly and fold it into the pastry cream in 3 additions.
10
Transfer the cream to a piping bag fitted with a 16 mm plain nozzle. Refrigerate.
Orange Blossom Soaking Syrup
Ingredients
- 50 g (1.8 oz) water
- 30 g (1.1 oz) sugar
- 5 g (0.2 oz) orange blossom water
Method
1
Bring the water and sugar to the boil.
2
Off the heat, add the orange blossom water.
Assembly
Ingredients
- half a pineapple
- one mango
Method
1
Cut the fruits (mango and pineapple) into pieces and place them in a small bowl. Add the passion fruit pulp and zest one lime. Mix and set aside.
2
Carefully cut the brioche in half using a serrated knife.
3
Soak both halves of the brioche with the still slightly warm syrup (a warm syrup on a cold brioche, for better absorption).
4
Pipe the diplomat cream onto the bottom half of the brioche, piping balls of cream all around the perimeter.
5
Place the exotic fruits in the centre (try to leave the fruit “juice” behind).
6
Cover with cream working from the centre outwards to the edges in a spiral. You can pipe another ring of cream on top of the first for extra indulgence.
7
Dust with icing sugar, then refrigerate for at least 1 hour before serving.
8
In the assembly photo, you can see that I first piped a little cream in a spiral, then added the fruits and finally covered them with cream again. I would not recommend doing it this way, as the fruits release a little water. I think if you place them directly on the brioche, it will absorb some of that excess liquid.
9
This dessert does not keep very well. If you eat it the next day, the fruits will already be slightly oxidised and the flavour will be slightly altered. I therefore recommend making it on the day and serving it in the evening, for example.
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