Apricot Custard and Brioche Slice

Food editor, author and TV presenter Allyson Gofton and her family left their
New Zealand home and lived for 18 months in a tiny village in the Hautes-Pyrénées. Here’s one of her favourite recipes.

Serves: 8

BREAD-MAKER GÂTEAU DES ROIS

Flavour this simple recipe with orange blossom water or vanilla, if wished.
Prep time: about 2 hours Cooking time: 25 minutes
Makes: 1
2 tablespoons active yeast mixture (also called
bread yeast mix)
1 tablespoon sugar
1/3 cup tepid water
50 grams butter, softened
2 large eggs
1½ cups high-grade flour
¼ teaspoon salt

Put the ingredients into the bowl of the bread machine in the order listed in your bread machine’s manual. For mine the order was: yeast, sugar, water, butter, eggs, flour and salt.


Set the bread machine to ‘dough only’ setting, and set it to work.

TOPPING

1 cup milk and ½ cup crème fraîche, cream or sour cream
2 tablespoons cornflour (if none to hand, use custard powder rather than flour)
2 tablespoons sugar
2 egg yolks (freeze the egg whites for use another time)
1 teaspoon vanilla paste, essence or extract
500 grams apricots, halved and stoned
icing sugar for dusting


Have the dough made and rested.

Preheat the oven to fan bake 170°C (190°C standard) and place the rack below the centre.

Heat the milk in a saucepan. Stir together the crème fraîche or cream, cornflour, sugar, egg yolks and vanilla to make a smooth paste. Whisk into the hot milk, and continue to whisk until the mixture thickens. Cover with a lid and set aside.

 Roll the dough out to 1 cm thick and place on a shallow-edged tray, which can be any shape so long as the dough is 1 cm thick. At this stage, leave the brioche dough for 10 minutes. If required use floured hands to push the dough back to the edge of the tray.

 Spread the cooled custard on top, leaving an area of about 1 cm free of custard around the edge. Sit the apricots in the custard either cut side or rounded side up.

 Bake in the preheated oven for 25–30 minutes until the dough is well cooked – it will be brown around the edges, but you need to make sure the centre is cooked, too. Sprinkle with icing sugar before serving.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

Recipe From ‘My French Kitchen’ by Allyson Gofton reproduced with permission from Penguin. Originally published in issue 110 of FrenchEntrée Magazine