Gâteau Breton

As good and as satisfying as the Saint-Honore trifle was, this Gâteau Breton is almost as amazing in a totally different way, and it shows just how much Rose deserved the Cookbook of the Year award. There is such amazing variety in the book--if you don't like the cake we bake one week, stick around--you're sure to like one that's coming up. From a trifle to a gateau to lemon cheesecakes--it's got it all, including this cake, which is unlike any I've ever tasted.

Because there is so much butter in this cake, I wanted the butter to be superb, so I splurged on high-fat European-style cultured butter. Luckily, the Organic Valley butter was on sale. If I ignored the fact that I was buying only a half-pound of butter, the price seemed quite reasonable.

The choice (for the one tablespoon of liquor in the cake) was dark rum or kirsch. I didn't have kirsch--another thing that my burgeoning liquor cabinet is lacking!--but I did have dark rum. When we were in St. John a few years ago, we believed that we were going to continue our practice of having rum drinks every night. Rum drinks don't taste the same in Minnesota as they do in the Virgin Islands, so we still have plenty of rum.

To complement the tropical rum, I decided to use a little of my mango sugar from Maui. A purchase of a bag of mango sugar benefits the Maui Culinary Academy, so of course I had to buy some. It smelled strongly mango-ish when I opened the bag, and I was afraid the mango flavor would overpower everything else, so only about one-third of the sugar in the cake was essence of mango. Even though neither mango nor dark rum is native to Brittany, where this cake hails from, they were both lovely choices.

On to the cake. This was such a simple cake to make that this could be the shortest post in the history of this blog. But it probably won't be that short since I'm feeling quite happy about the outcome of the cake. Toasting the almonds was probably the most complicated step, which shows you how uncomplicated it is.

Or maybe sifting the flour (bleached all-purpose) was the most complicated step. I include this photo as a present to Jim, who loves to take pictures of little mountains of sifted flour.

The fancy butter and fancy sugar are beaten together. And four eggs from free-range chickens are added one at a time.

(Guess who just watched Food, Inc.?  And who is never again going to buy eggs from factory-raised chickens?)
That's about all there is to mixing up the dough, which is very thick when you put it in the tart pan.

It takes a while to smooth it out into the pan. Oh--maybe this is the most difficult step!

I can't even pretend it was difficult in any way to brush on the beaten egg.

Or that it was difficult to make a little crosshatch pattern with a fork, although I did discover that holding the fork rightside up made a better pattern than holding it rightside down.

35 minutes later, it came out of the oven, all shiny and beautiful.

If I didn't know this was French (on account of its being a gâteau, and on account of its being a gâteau from Brittany), I'd think it was French. French things can be really fancy and crazy, but they can also be quite simple and lovely. This is "country," so it's in the simple and lovely category. French country women have better things to do than pipe buttercream. At least, that's my opinion, which is not based on anything factual.

I made this cake to serve our friends June and David for a late dessert after we saw Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Jungle Theater. It was a very good version--Stephen Yoakum and Michelle Barber were fantastic as George and Martha. We were remembering seeing the movie when it came out--about 43 years ago--and David said it's a play you should probably see only once every 43 years.
I was a little worried about serving this gâteau as dessert because it's so plain. But it seemed like it should be plain, so I didn't want to fancify it too much. I decided it called for a single strawberry. But they were very enthusiastic about the cake, plain as it was. June asked if she could eat it with her fingers, and I said she could, because then I could eat it with my fingers too. The advantage of this approach is that cutting it with a fork causes crumbs, which might not get eaten, and you'll want to eat every bite of this cake.
Fortunately, today is Mother's Day, which allowed me to eat a piece of cake for breakfast.
I loved this cake. Rose compares it to pound cake and shortbread, but I thought it was more like a scone. A scone that needs no jam or clotted cream--it shines all on its own. I loved it so much that I believe I may have been a Brittany farm wife in a former life, and this recipe is quite similar to the recipe I learned from my grandmother, also a farm wife from Brittany.
Or maybe I never had a former life, and I just like butter in this one.

TASTING PANEL
Sarah: "Delicious buttery flavor. They remind me a little of the best scones."
June: "It's dense, but not heavy. It's delicious."
David: "What can I say, except that it's really, really good."
Jim: "I like the different textures, crunchy on top and chewy below."