Easy French creme caramel cake recipe

12.Jun.2019

This is one quick and easy creme caramel cake with pistachios from Brittany in France. Brittany is a region in the northwestern part of France facing the Atlantic ocean, and the main city is Nantes.

That would be it 🙂

60 minutes PREPARATION

40 minutes COOKING

Easy PREPARE

8 PORTIONS

components

FOR CARAMEL CREAM YOU NEED:
90 gr of sugar
55 gr of butter
a pinch of salt
115 gr of condensed milk with 35% of fat
1 gr powdered gelatin
180 gr of mascarpone cheese
FOR BRITTANY CRUST YOU NEED:
100 gr of butter
100 gr of sugar
50 gr of egg yolks
80 gr general purpose flour
60 gr integral wheat flour
8 gr dry yeast
1 gr coarse sea salt
one orange zest
FOR DECORATION YOU NEED:
80 gr of cleaned pistachios
a bit of seasonal fruit

Instruction

For the Brittany crust, mix eggs and sugar with a bit of salt and whisk it well with a spatula. Then, add butter which was at room temperature for quite a while to the mixture.
Then, in a separate bowl, mix two types of flour and add dry yeast.
Mix it all together with the previous egg, sugar and butter mixture with a spatula. Homogenize the new misture with a spatula and add grated orange zest. That is how you make the dough.
Cover the dough with a transparent foil and leave it in the fridge for 1 hour to rest.
After an hour, take it out of the fridge and stretch the dough with a rolling pin between two baking papers.
The mould you need has a diameter of 20 cm, and the thickness of the crust is about 3-4 cm.
Caramel cream is prepared in the following way: Put the sugar into a pot and gradually warm it up at medium temperature. Be careful not to burn it.
Then take it off the burner and mix in the butter and coarse sea salt. Leave it to cool while you mix condensed milk and powdered gelatin which have to rest together for 5 minutes before warming them. After that, warm up the condensed milk.
After warming up the condensed milk and gelatin, gradually unite it with caramel cream. Once the mixture is cool, gradually mix in mascarpone cheese. The detailed procedure is described in the post's text.
The cake crust should be baked at 160°C for about 30 minutes. Check the baking process all the time and coordinate the baking time with your oven.
Once the crust cools a bit, cover it with acetate foil and pour in the caramel cream. Decorate with crushed pistachios, seasonal fruit or with edible seasonal flowers.

As for the recipe, it’s a slightly modified version of the original by Christophe Adam.

I will try to present you with all the amazing people whose work captivated me during all of my French travels. They became my role models.

Quick creme caramel cake with pistachio consists of

Biscuit-type crust. The French name for this crust is Pâte Sablée. In a free translation, it is a sandy crust. You get the „sand“ when mixing butter at room temperature (very soft) by hand into eggs, sugar, and then all of it into flour and yeast. Pâte Sablée is actually a typical French tart crust.

Then, I used creme caramel with a salty touch as a filling.

And the icing on the cake are crushed pistachios.

You can certainly combine some seasonal fruit with the pistachios.

I used seasonal flowers 🙂

How to make Pâte Sablée?

You don’t need a blender for Pâte Sablée – only a silicone spatula. First, I mixed eggs and sugar with a little bit of salt and blended them all well with a spatula. Then I added butter, which was at room temperature for quite some time, to the mixture. So, it’s very soft, but not liquid.

I mixed two types of flour in a special bowl. White wheat flour and integral wheat flour – this is what’s special about this quick Brittany cake. I added dry yeast to the flour mixture as well. Then, I united it with the previous egg, sugar and butter mixture with a spatula. I homogenized the new mixture, again only with a spatula, and added grated orange zest.

I covered it with a transparent foil and left it in the fridge for 1 hour to rest.

After an hour, I took it out of the fridge and stretched the dough out with a rolling pin between two baking papers.

I put the crust into a round inox mould of a 20 cm diameter. The thickness of the crust was 3-4 cm.

I did not stretch the crust like I would do for a tart, on the edges of the mould, but if you prefer it like that – go for it. I opted for a quick layered cake.

How to make creme caramel?

Ugh 🙂 My favourite part. By the way, the first time I tried caramel cream was in France. Before that, I somehow did not consider it a ‘must try.’ Over there, they eat it like crazy. They make it very often and even pour it over crêpes.

So, you can use this caramel cream recipe for crêpes, too. Even the crêpes are not the same with it 🙂

For caramel cream, I needed sugar, butter (what would the French do without butter 🙂 ), cooking cream, or even better, condensed milk (but unsweetened) – it would be best if you can find it with 35% of fat. Then, you need a little bit of powdered gelatin and mascarpone cheese.

First, I made caramel out of sugar. So, I poured sugar into a pot and gradually warmed it up at medium temperature. Be careful not to let it burn because you will not be able to get rid of the bitter taste later.

Then, I took it off the burner and mixed in butter and coarse sea salt.

I mixed condensed milk and powdered gelatin in a separate bowl and left it aside for 5 minutes. After that, I put that pot on the burner to warm it up as well, and then gradually united caramel and warm condensed milk.

Once I got a homogeneous mixture, I left it aside for a bit at room temperature.

How did I mix mascarpone with creme caramel?

Pay attention to this part, so that the caramel cream is cold enough to mix in with mascarpone cheese.

I poured mascarpone cheese into a separate bowl and added a bit of caramel cream to make the initial mixture. Then, I gradually added, one by one, a spoon of creme caramel to it.

At the end, I united this now slightly warmer mixture with the rest of the creme caramel. I mixed it all well so that there were no lumps.

Crust baking in the oven

I baked this quick cake Brittany crust at 160°C, for about 20-30 minutes. It’s important to constantly check the crust in the oven because everyone’s oven is different.

Creme caramel cake layering

Once the crust is baked, take it out of the oven and cover it with acetate foil (for those who are making a quick layered cake). For those who made the crust like the one for a tart, you don’t need anything.

On the crust (or in the crust), pour the salty caramel cream and sprinkle with pistachios or some seasonal fruit.