Tarte Tropizziene

Make the brioche dough.

1. In a dough mixer bowl add the flour together with the egg, milk, orange blossom water, dry yeast, salt and sugar. Knead at low speed for about 8-10 minutes. (semi-developed dough).

2. Stop the kneader and start adding the butter little by little. It must be fully integrated into the dough before adding more.

3. Knead until you get a good gluten development. The dough must be elastic, smooth and not cracked.

4. Grease a tupper or hermetic container, place the dough inside and let it rise almost it grows 1/3 of its volume. Depending on the temperature it can take 2-4 hours. In my case it was 2 hours at 73ºF (23ºC).

5. Place in the fridge until the next day.

Next day Shape.

1. Dump the dough onto a clean work surface and fold the ends gently towards the centre, without exerting too much tension.

2. Using a roller, begin to stretch the dough,  to form a circle with a 9.5 inch/24 cm diameter. ( you can divide the dough and roll  into 2 discs)

3. Place the dough disc on a tray lined with baking paper.

Make final proof and bake.

1. Cover with film and let it rise until it doubles in size. (about 3 hours at 84ºF (29ºC) .

2. Preheat oven to 355ºF (180ºC).

3. Brush with beaten egg and garnish with pearled sugar.

4. Bake at medium height for 18 minutes. Remember that the interior temperature must reach 190º-194ºF (88-90ºC) for the baking to be finished.

5. Remove from the oven and leave to cool completely on a rack.

6. In a saucepan pour the water together with the sugar and orange blossom water. Place at medium heat.

7. Once it boils, leave for 1 minute and remove from heat.

8. Let it cool completely.

Make Madame cream (mousseline cream + whipped cream).

1. In a saucepan pour the milk together with the vanilla. Place it in a medium heat and leave it until it boils gently.

2. In a bowl, beat the yolks together with the sugar, cornstarch and flour previously sifted. Mix well with the help of a whisk.

3. Once the milk is boiling, pour some milk (with the help of a strainer to keep cream or vanilla seeds from seeping in) into the egg yolk mixture.

4. Beat well with the whisk to warm the yolks and avoid lumps.

5. Add the rest of the milk and mix again.

6. Pour the mixture into the saucepan and place it in a medium heat to bring it back to the boil, stirring constantly. You will notice that the texture becomes thicker.

7. Once it boils, let it cook for another 1 minute, always stirring.

8. Remove from the heat and pour over a tray/tupper, cover with transparent film to prevent a layer of skin that looks like "crust" on top, and let it cool completely.

9. Once ready, set aside at room temperature until ready for use

Make the whipped cream.

Before we get ready to whip the cream we must make sure of two things;

• Cream must be cold 24 hours before used it.

• The bowl in which we are going to make whipped cream must be cold. I recommend to use one aluminium bowl and freeze 20 minutes before beat it.

1. Pour heavy cream into freeze bowl and beat with an electric mixer into low speed.

2. Once cream is becoming to form stiff peaks, add sugar little by little stirring the whole time. Increase speed gradually but without reaches high one. Ideally use medium speed.

3. Be sure not to over-beat, otherwise cream will become lumpy and butter-like.

4. Cover with plastic wrap and chill until used it.

Beat the butter.

1. In the KitchenAid bowl add the butter and beat at medium speed with the help of the flat beater. We must obtain a very aerated texture, creamy and whitish.

Make mousseline (cream pastry + butter).

Remove the pastry cream from the fridge.

1. With the help of a whisk, beat the pastry cream to smooth it. Set aside.

2. Once we have the butter ready, add a little pastry cream together with it and mix until both elaborations are completely integrated.

3. Continue adding pastry cream as it integrates with the butter and mix until completely homogenized. We will do it until all the cream is integrated.

Finish Madame cream.

1. With the help of a spatula we begin to integrate whipped cream into the mousseline.

2. We will do it with soft and enveloping movements trying not to exceed in the movements not to lose the texture.

3. Once we have everything integrated, transfer the cream to a piping bag with a smooth 0,8 inch/2 cm in diameter tip.

Assemble the Tarte Tropézienne.

1. Using a cutter cake, cut the brioche in half lengthwise.

2. Remove the upper part and set aside.

3. Brush all the surface with the syrup, in my case I used all the quantity.

4. Fill the inside with the cream Madame, this part you will see better in the video.

5. Once we have filled the brioche, put the cover that we had removed on the cream.

6. To finish, sprinkle with icing sugar.

7. Serve.