Gateau Basque

An intriguing recipe from this month's Australian Gourmet Traveler ('AGT') magazine. A cake filled with pastry cream.

Last week I bought a couple of copies of gourmet topic magazines ('delicious.' and AGT) to see if there are any I would be interested in subscribing to. I found that I wasn't that impressed with the content in general. An awful lot of glossy ads for things I can't afford, and don't really want. A few nice recipes, but not that many. A lot of "celebrity"personalities covered though, which again are not in my personal domain of interests.

AGT did have a focus this month on Spanish and Basque recipes, and a particular dessert caught my attention. I was also inspired to make a 'Butter Chicken Curry Paella', my own invention, which turned out OK, but not great.

The gateau didn't look that difficult, just time consuming. It proved to be a bit more tricky than I expected. Normally with a cake you make a batter, with this one you make a dough, which is then chilled and rolled, similar to a pie crust. The dough was a lot stickier than I was prepared for, and my method of rolling onto floured baking paper wasn't entirely successful. I did manage to get it into the pan about 70% intact, and then was able to repair it. The repair process was initially frustrating, with sticky fingers doing more damage than repair, until I got my hands wet, which simplified matters greatly.

Also my abysmal St George Oven was hotter than it was supposed to be. Never buy a St George Oven, they look nice, but have the worst quality. The gateau was a bit over-cooked on the bottom. It did smell wonderful though.

It ended up tasting quite nice. The mix of textures were very pleasant, and the flavors well balanced.