Basque & Navarre · Dessert
Goxua
- Intermediate
- 45 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, acid holding everything up to the light, fading in warm spice.
Ingredients
- 300 ml double cream, at least 35 percent fat, very cold
- 30 g icing sugar
- 500 ml whole milk
- 4 egg yolks
- 120 g caster sugar
- 40 g cornflour
- 1 strip lemon peel and 1 cinnamon stick
- 3 eggs, 90 g caster sugar and 90 g plain flour, for the sponge
- 100 ml water, 80 g sugar and 30 ml rum, for the syrup
- 100 g caster sugar, for the caramel
Equipment
Torch
The skills inside
Whipping a meringueThe brûlée torchSugar stages & caramelFolding: keeping the air in
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Whip the cream with the icing sugar only to soft peaks that hold their shape but fold over as the whisk lifts, then spoon it into the base of six straight glasses and chill; this layer has to carry the sponge.
- Infuse the milk with lemon peel and cinnamon. Whisk yolks, sugar and cornflour, temper with the hot milk, then cook it back in the pan, whisking hard, until it thickens and throws one heavy bubble; keep it there a full minute, then cool with film on the surface.
- Whisk the eggs and sugar to the ribbon, fold in the sifted flour in three goes, bake in a shallow tin at 180C (350F) for 12 minutes until the top springs back, and cool. 12 min
- Cut discs of sponge to fit the glasses, lay one on the cream and spoon over the rum syrup until the crumb is soaked through but no liquid pools at the edge.
- Spread the cold pastry cream over the sponge and level it, chill an hour, then pour on thin caramel or dust with sugar and blowtorch to an amber sheet that cracks under a spoon.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Folding: keeping the air in 34 recipes
- The air was actually built first and it shows: whatever was creamed or whipped has changed colour and grown in volume, pale and light rather than dense.
- The two mixtures were brought closer before being combined: a little of the light one worked into the heavy one first, so the rest is not beaten flat trying to move it.
- Folded and not stirred: a broad implement down through the middle, across the base, up and over, with the bowl turned between strokes.
- Stopped the moment the streaks disappear. It is still visibly aerated and holds its shape briefly when the spoon lifts away.
- Into the tin and into the oven straight away: a batter left standing on the bench gives back the air it was built for.
Where it goes wrong It was stirred until it looked perfectly smooth. Every stroke past the point where the streaks vanish knocks out air that cannot be put back, so the bake comes out dense and short of the tin, and often wet through the middle where there was no structure to hold it.
Whipping a meringue 40 recipes
- Bowl and whisk are clean and dry with no trace of fat or yolk. Grease prevents the foam outright, and there is no recovering a bowl that had it partway through.
- The sugar went in gradually once the whites were already foaming, rather than all at once at the start.
- No grit: a little rubbed between finger and thumb feels smooth, so the sugar has dissolved into the foam rather than sitting in it.
- Stiff peaks means the tip stands with a slight bow when the whisk lifts, and the bowl can be tipped without the mass moving in it.
- Glossy and smooth rather than chalky or dull, with no liquid gathering underneath it in the bowl.
Where it goes wrong It was whipped past stiff peaks. A minute beyond glory the protein network tightens and tears, the foam turns grainy and matte, water weeps out beneath it, and folding that into anything gives a mixture that collapses on the way to the oven.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Moscato d’Asti
- Also Right
- Late-harvest Riesling
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling elderflower
Citrus desserts need a wine sweeter than they are, with acid enough to keep up: light, frothy, and low-proof wins.
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