Gateau basque (custard tart from the pays bas

8 Servings

Ingredients

Quantity Ingredient
160 grams Butter (5 2/3 oz)
160 grams Sugar (5 2/3 oz)
2 Eggs
240 grams Flour (8 1/2 oz)
1 teaspoon Baking powder
1 teaspoon Orange flower water
2 decilitres Creme patissiere (7 fl oz)
1 Egg yolk mixed with 1 tb milk
Butter for the tin
Flour for the tin
1 Cake tin, about 18cm/7in diameter, 5cm/2in deep
Piping bag

Directions

EQUIPMENT

Using a bowl and whisk, beat the butter until smooth; add the sugar and beat for 3 minutes. Still beating, add first one egg, then the other and finally beat in the flour, baking powder and orange flower water. The mixture should be very smooth.

Preheat the oven to 200 oC / 400 oF.

Butter the inside of the cake tin and sprinkle with flour. Turn over the tin and tap out the excess flour. Fill the piping bag with some of the egg-sugar-...-mixture. Starting from the outside and working inwards, pipe the mixture into a spiral so that the bottom of the tin is entirely covered, with no gaps between the spirals.

Carefully spoon the creme patissiere into the centre of the tin, spread it out slightly, but leave at least 2 cm / ¾ in uncovered all round the edge of the tin.

Continue to pipe spirals from the outside inwards, piping one on top of the other, so that the creme patissiere is complerely enclosed on all sides by the egg-sugar-...-mixture.

Brush the top of the tart with the egg yolk-milk-mixture, score a lattice pattern with a fork and cook in the preheated oven for 45 minutes.

Leave to cool, then unmould on to a wire rack.

Serving

Accompanied by some home-made jam or, better still, redcurrant jelly.

(Albert and Michel Roux, The Roux brothers, French country cooking, M Papermac, 1992, ISBN 0-333-57670-5)

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