Recipe #3: Gateau Breton (or Brittany Buttercake)

Recently I attended a Rotary sponsored camp called RYLA which is a whole week away of team-building and leadership development (and being thrown totally out of your comfort zone!). I had such a great time and met some amazing people - all-in-all a very satisfying and tiring week. It did however put me VERY behind on my blogging, and I missed Chris a lot - so I am glad to be home again and back to my lovely baking adventures (or trials maybe would be more apt...)

Before I left I made sure I did some baking for Chris - one batch being Recipe #3 in my well-loved book. Looking at the picture, this is definitely not something I would see and think “Yum, I have to try that out!” But since I am doing this “properly” - although maybe a wee bit less often than stated in ‘Rule Number 1’ (see my first post) - I decided to go ahead and do it anyway.

Boy you have no idea how excited I was that the first thing this recipe asked for was separated eggs. I bought a second-hand egg separator in my travels and have been dying to use it (ah! The small things in life) - and I wasn’t quite brave enough to try my hand at making a pavlova just yet. Maybe that can be a test for me when I get to the back of the book - to see if I really have become a domestic goddess. Hmmm, we’ll see about that.

Gateau Breton: Nigella's version

My crosshatching - it's a little bit posh!

Anyway this recipe actually turned out to be quite fun, because the next thing I had to do was get messy. I had to make a mound of flour on the bench and then just tip everything else on top and knead it together (kind of like Rewena bread). And it is so quick and easy! It literally took me about 4 minutes to make the batter and pour it into the pan. I even got a little bit fancy and used a fork to put a wicker basket pattern on the top before cooking!

Unfortunately the pattern kind of died in the cooking process - and apparently I haven’t quite mastered my oven yet either. It wasn’t quite burnt, but it was certainly a lot darker than the one in the picture. Overcooked or not, a fair amount of it was eaten before we made it to bed that night. It is somewhere between a shortbread and a cake (I think it was supposed to be softer, but my over-cooking made it more like a biscuit), and it is SO buttery! We had to wipe our fingers after each slice.

Burnt. Again. Darn it.

This is maybe not something I would be in a rush to make again, but all the same it was quite tasty, and it went really well with a nice cup of Earl Grey. Chris’ rating: 3/5

...And just for the heck of it, I made a batch of ginger crunch as well. Yum.