Simple Brioche

Who doesn't like brioche? When it's warm and buttery and crusty and sweet. Mmmm! Unfortunately the brioche you get in the supermarkets far inferior to the stuff you can bake at home. It's not even that hard. You just need a bit of kneading, a bit of waiting and then boom - you've got your loaf. If I could I would make it every day I would. I'm making mine and planning to keep it stale for a Summer pudding but I don't think I'll be able to! When you're making the dough keep in mind it's meant to be a soft dough so if it starts off a bit runny just keep on kneading and it should come together. I use an electric mixer with the dough hook attached to knead but simply because I'm lazy and I can't be bothered to do it by hand. I got the brioche recipe from la Tartine Gourmande.

Makes 1 loaf

1 2/3 cups or 250g all-purpose flour

1tbsp of dried fast acting yeast

1/3 cup or 80 ml warm milk

2 tbsp fine sugar

2 3/4 oz or 80g softened butter, cut into small cubes

2 eggs

a little more milk and sugar for a glaze

1. Mix the flour and yeast together then make a well in the center, slowly pour the milk into the well and mix together. Add the sugar then knead in the softened butter a bit at a time until all incorporated. Add the eggs one at a time until the dough is smooth.

2. Knead for ten minutes then cover with clingfilm and put in a warm place, like an airing cupboard, for 2 hours or until the dough has doubled in size. Now knead the dough again for ten minutes and place in a well buttered 10 inch or 26 cm rectangular loaf tin and leave for another hour somewhere warm. Preheat the oven to 205 C or 400 F. Brush the loaf with the milk and sugar then place in the oven for ten minutes. After ten minutes turn the heat down to 350 F or 175 C and bake for 20 minutes. Test to see if it's cooked by inserting a knife and if it comes out clean it's done. 

Pistachio and fig macaroons

Macaroons or macarons (French) are really fashionable these days. This is meant to be quite a rustic recipe but even so they're not as scary as they're made out to be. I haven't used an Italian meringue in my recipe (hot sugar beaten in to stiff egg whites), just a normal meringue as I've tried both methods and there doesn't seem to be any difference and trust me it's a lot easier. In this recipe I've used pistachio instead of almonds so unless you can find ground pistachios you'll have to grind your own which though is a bit of a faff it's worth it for these little gems. It's not actually a very seasonal recipe so can be mad any time of year and of course you could make almond lemon macaroons just as easily by using ground almonds instead of pistachios and lemon curd instead of fig butter cream.

Makes 40 macaroons

For the macaroon:

3/4 & 1/3 cups or 125g ground pistachios

1 & 1/4 cups or 125g icing sugar

3 egg whites

1/4 of a cup & 2 tbsp or 75g of caster sugar

For the butter cream:

3 tbsp or 45g butter

1 cup or 100g icing sugar

3 chopped dried figs

1. Line and grease 2 baking sheets and preheat the oven to 160°C or 320°F. Whisk the egg whites until stiff then slowly whisk in the caster sugar spoon by spoon. Fold in the icing/confectioners sugar and pistachios then keep on folding until when you drop it from a spoon it falls like a ribbon. Pipe the macaroon into small circles then leave to dry for 20 minutes. Bake for 15 minutes and leave to cool.

2. While they cool make the fig butter cream. Beat together the butter and icing/confectioners sugar then mix in the chopped figs and ripple in the fig syrup. Sandwich the macaroons together with butter cream.