I've been meaning to make this recipe for a while. About nine months ago, it came up in conversation that a friend of mine was actually of Basque heritage. It just so happened that I had recently been at a meeting where I was served some of what was introduced to me as Basque Cake.
It was delicious, of course, with an interesting array of flavors, contained in a some kind of shortcake. It suddenly became my mission to make this cake for my Basque friend.
Call it a desire to reunite her with her heritage. Call it an excuse to bake.
I call it tasty.
The actual process of making the cakes (yes, always multiple) turned out to be somewhat of a journey. I found my first opportunity to make a Basque cake in April. There was to be a spectacular dinner, and I signed myself to contribute dessert (no surprise). The seed for Basque cake had been germinating somewhere in the back of my mind for several months at that point, but it wasn't yet ready to make its way into the world. First, I wanted to foray into the realm of cheesecakes. I decided to make a chocolate-chip cookie-dough cheesecake. Simple enough in principle, but delicious-sounding and complicated enough to keep me happy.
It was not to be. (Or was it? Come back in another month) One of the other cooks making a dessert had decided that *she* wanted to make cheesecake, and as I was (unsurprisingly) late in submitting my choice for dessert, I bowed out of the competition. Now I was stuck, because I didn't want to make anything resembling a cheesecake, and dessert number three was slated to be something cookie-like (it turned out to be cinnamon rolls). Suddenly, I was struck with the realization -- the something in between a cheesecake and a cookie could very well be a Basque cake.
The Basque cake, in theory, is a shortdough crust filled with custard and then covered with a top crust and baked, and as it bakes the custard and the crust intermingle and produce one solid cake-like delicious mass. This was my way out! I quickly looked around for a good recipe.
It turns out that this is actually quite difficult. Paraphrasing one location, everybody has their own Basque cake recipe, and each one is different. And it was true. Every recipe I found had some different interpretation of what a Basque cake was and/or how to make one.
I decided to synthesize a recipe. I made myself a custard, and a crust dough. I assembled my cakes, and I put the two of them in the oven, side by side, brothers on a tasty mission. I checked on them over the next hour or so, as the crust appeared to brown nicely, but the central custard remained unperturbed. Finally, it seemed to have reached some kind of edible consistency, like a pie. At the very least I could hope to cut it, and not have it ooze out from the sides of the cut.
I took my cakes out of the oven, one at a time.
Tragedy struck as I took the second cake. A carelessly replaced oven rack tilted as I pulled it out for better access to my cake. The springform pan I was using, having a low coefficient of friction as any good pan should, started on its own, unintentional journey out of the oven. As it picked up speed, time slowed down. I heard it slide down the rack, looked down, tried to grab the cake with one clumsy oven mitt and the rack with the other, succeeded in neither, and jumped back just in time to get oven-hot custard all down the front of my pants.
I struggled to get the rack back in the oven, all the while aware that there was scalding-hot food just millimeters away from my skin. I was informed by onlookers and helpers that I should remove my pants. But the cake was too important. I grabbed the springform from the floor (where it had actually landed face-up -- crust empty of custard, but face up -- small miracles) and tried to figure out if I could scoop custard into the empty shell. But it was all either on me or on the floor, and mostly all undesirable.
The custard on my pants cooled actually pretty fast, so I had a tasty, portable snack (I had just done laundry, okay?) while I figured out what to do with the remains of my eviscerated cake. At the suggestion of another kitchen occupant, I made some whipped cream, spooned it into the cavity, and sprinkled blueberries on top. It looked beautiful, but it covered a heart of lies.
Fortunately, one of the cakes was still whole, so I served two different kinds of desserts that night -- a Basque cake intact, but with sadly very liquid custard, and a whipped cream pie in a cake-shell.
My Basque friend never actually made it to dinner.
When I set out a second time to make these cakes, I had learned from my mistakes. I used new parts of recipes and changed some, changed the amounts of crust and custard in proportion to each other, played around. What came out was just about enough for four cakes (though I only made three). I have halved the recipe here, so that you may enjoy smaller portions than I burdened myself with (it took me a week and a half of making cakes every few days to exhaust my supply of dough and custard).
Without further ado, I present you my interpretation of the Basque cake:
Custard:
4 cups milk
Vanilla (2 beans, if you have them, otherwise extract works fine)
1-1/2 cup white sugar
6 egg yolks
1 cup flour
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter
Flavorings
A quick note: These ambiguous "flavorings" I mention are any number of things that are supposed to be added to the custard and/or the crust to give it that special Basque flavor. Most often they include some kind of orange flavoring, as well as a spirit of sorts, whether it be rum, brandy, or Armagnac (a type of brandy from the Armagnac region in France). I rifled through what leftover alcohol was in our pantry and pieced something together. Don't worry too much about what goes into it, as long as you feel the flavor is sufficiently deep but citrus-y. You will need anywhere from 1 tbsp. to almost a cup of the liquid, depending on how strong you want the flavor. I kept it to a rough couple of tablespoons.
To make the custard, put the milk on the stove (careful with the selection of pot size -- when milk foams it nearly triples in volume for a moment, so try to avoid overflow) and add vanilla extract. If you have vanilla beans, split them open and add to the milk instead of extract. Bring to a boil. (If you are using beans, once the milk reaches a boil, take it off heat, fish out the beans, and scrape the insides into the milk, discarding the husk afterward.) Meanwhile, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until it turns a lovely pale yellow color. Combine the flour and salt, and then add that flour to the eggs/sugar and whisk until smooth.
Now the fun part. Add the milk (and vanilla) to the egg mixture. The milk is going to be a lot hotter than the eggs, so in order not to fry the eggs immediately upon contact, you must start with small amounts of the hot liquid, whisking the entire time, until the temperature of the egg mixture starts to raise to the point that pouring more of the hot milk in won't leave you with a scrambled-egg custard. (This is called tempering)
Once the two are combined, place them back on medium heat, stirring often, until the mixture becomes thick. At that point, add the butter (in small chunks) and the 'flavorings' to the custard. Stir until the butter is melted.
While it is still warm and pliable, pour the custard into a shallow dish, and cover the surface of the custard with plastic wrap, pressing carefully to remove the largest of air-bubbles inside.
Refrigerate the custard.
This is what it looks like once it has reached custard-hood:
Crust:
2 cups finely-ground almonds
2 cups AP flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1-1/2 cup butter
1-1/2 cup sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp. almond extract
citrus zest (optional)
One of the recipes I used called for almond meal, and not having that, I put almonds in a food processor (okay, I'll be honest, a blender) and ground them into a fine powder. Be careful with this, though, because the almond is not entirely dry, and so you will start to get clumps of what is almost a paste, and it will be hard to completely pulverize all the almonds. I recommend getting the almonds down to a moderately fine consistency and then mixing in a bit of the flour before taking it down to almond-meal fineness.
Combine the flour, almonds, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
Cream together the butter and sugar, as if you were making cookies. Add the eggs and then the almond extract. (If you're like me, you might also add vanilla extract. There is nothing that vanilla cannot go into) If you want an extra citrus-y flavor, add a teaspoon or so of lemon or orange zest.
Slowly add the flour mixture. You should have what seems to be, for all intents and purposes, a cookie dough. Put it in the fridge to cool (or the freezer, if you're super-impatient, I suppose. Just don't forget about it).
Putting it all together:
Preheat an oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-inch pie tin. This pan worked so much better than the springforms I used the first time.
The dough is exceedingly buttery (read: delicious) so you'll have to be both swift and cautious with this part. Pull off about a quarter of the dough (remember, this recipe makes about two cakes) and roll it out to about 1/4-inch thickness. (It helps so much to roll between two sheets of plastic wrap. It doesn't stick to the rolling pin or the rolling surface.) You should have enough surface area to cover the bottom and sides of your pie pan. If the dough seems to warm and pliable, stick it back in the fridge for a few minutes. Lay this rolled dough into the buttered pan. Carefully press it down into the pan, filling all the edges without breaking the dough. It will probably come up over the sides. This is perfectly fine.
Prick the bottom of the dough with a fork as if you were making a pie. It will help the custard and crust come together more nicely.
Take about half of the custard you prepared and put it into the pie shell you have created for yourself. Take care not to make it too deep (unless you really like custard, of course). About 1/2-inch deep works well. (Don't worry about filling the pie shell all the way to the top)
Note: You don't have to (and may not) end up using all the custard you made. When I made this recipe, I gave about a third of the custard to Chef A for Nanaimo bars and still had enough for three cakes. Custard is a) delicious all by itself and b) good in many other recipes.
This is your cake at this point:
Now take another 1/4 of your dough and roll it out again, to about 1/4-inch thickness. (You may have to throw this one in the fridge as well) Lightly prick the surface of the dough with a fork, then invert it onto the waiting cake-shell-filled-with-custard. Press out all air bubbles, then crimp the edges of the cake, cut off excess material, and pop that baby into the oven. If you want to (and I recommend it) cover the edges with foil to prevent them from burning/browning too quickly.
Cook 20-30 minutes, then go in with a sharp knife and make a couple of cuts in the surface to release steam. Return to the oven.
Let it cook for another 15-20 minutes. The crust will turn golden brown and look deliciously crispy. Like so:
Remove from oven and let cool. Voila!P.S. My Basque friend didn't get any of this cake either -- oh well, I guess I'll just have to make it again~!
Thanks for bearing with me,
~Chef G
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